Analysts: online gaming to be legal in US once more
Posted by Gavin Smith on 13 Jul 2009 at 10:07
Internet gaming will soon be made legal again in America, experts have predicted.
Online Casino Reports said the investment bank Goldman Sachs made the forecast in a note to investors last week.
The motivation behind the u-turn is expected to be tax income, with a legal internet poker and casino market thought to be worth up to $12 billion.
The bank said: "We believe it is logical to assume that the US market will eventually regulate - given the potential implications for US tax take, if nothing else.
"Were the market to be legalized, we believe that the size of the revenue opportunity could increase materially... Based on an assumption of 30% penetration of offline poker players and $300 gross gaming revenue (GGR) per player, we estimate that a legal poker market could be worth $3bn."
Online Casino Reports said the Goldman Sachs assessment came to its conclusions via a 'grossing up' of PartyGaming's intake in line with its nine per cent of the market. According to this, the American poker market is thought to have been worth $1.5 billion in 2008.
The firm also said that attempts to draw up regulations for internet gaming could take time federally, while the process was likely to be quicker at state level.
US congressman Barney Frank has already launched a bid to overturn the laws against internet gambling, with debates expected to take place in September at the earliest.
Mr Frank is bidding to overturn the 2006 unlawful internet gambling enforcement act which essentially banned internet gaming in the US by making it illegal to transfer cash from banks to gaming websites.
