POLITICS AND GAMBLING…
The physical, the virtual and the politics - a look at the human capital implications
Jim Theodore, founding Partner of Exeter Partners, gaming expert and associate of executive search firm, Tyzack, talks about the current issue facing those UK and EU companies with beachheads in the US,aiming to deploy once new States open up to online gaming.
P
olitics and gambling have always had at least one thing in common: both are a game of chance. Even though the US gambling industry has always had a large presence in Washington, the politics of
gambling policy are not always clear. Much of the industry voice has come from a small
group of highly profitable casinos on both coasts - principally Las Vegas in the west and Atlantic City in the east. Yet, united as that front has been, it is now fracturing and as a result its influence on Capitol Hill is beginning to decline. This is due in part to an over- supply of smaller regional casino hotels, and now online gaming is starting to make its presence felt.
“Global online gambling is predicted to generate in excess of $US22 billion in gross revenues over the next three to five years”
Currently, each state can decide whether to allow
any form of gambling – bricks and mortar betting facilities, lotteries, horse racing and online gambling amongst others. To date, only three US states – Delaware, Nevada and New Jersey - have fully
58 OCTOBER 2014
legalised Internet gambling, and the expectation is for a further twelve states to pass similar legislation by 2015.
On the casino front, many of the well-established
organisations have already seen their market share eroded as a result of new gambling facilities being built on Indian reservations and the recent introduction of gaming in states such as Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania. The last thing some of the old guard want now is legalised Internet gambling.
That said, however, not everyone in the ‘bricks ‘n
mortar’ sector is against online gaming. Forward- looking casino operators believe that Internet gambling is an inevitability and that not only will they be able to extend their physical brand on the world wide web, but they can also make financial gains in the process. With vast sums of money being donated by opponents of online gambling to sympathetic politicians, it’s difficult to make a clear-cut prediction
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