Online Gambling Contradictions
September 28, 2009
The idea of online gambling in Trinidad and Tobago is an ongoing exercise in confusion. The horse racing industry is set to employ more than 5000 people in Trinidad and Tobago and about 20,000 in Jamaica. However even with all of this gambling going on, the officials in these countries do not want to see online gambling as legal. The idea of online gambling has emerged as a major public policy issue in several countries of the Caribbean.
With the recent online gambling problems that the United States has been having with Antigua, it would seem that these smaller countries might want to jump on board at legalizing it themselves. In Trinidad and Tobago the government announced that it wanted to ban all casino gambling, and online gambling, which upset its residents very much. The government said that online gambling was historically founded on criminals and contradictions.
However the gambling industry brings in a lot of money for the country. They have been involved in gambling since 1968 when they introduced their national lottery. Before that private organizations that offer gambling had been in business for more than 100 years. The most popular form of gambling is horse racing, and it has been around since 19th-century Trinidad and has never been illegal.
Now that they are offering online gambling through their national lottery, some wonder why the big push to try and make illegal now. For the government the online gambling has become a real boon with revenues averaging around 1 billion TT dollars per annum. For the government to consider making this illegal now, would really be shooting themselves in their own foot.
