Will President Barack Obama Set Online Gambling Free

November 5 - This indeed is the billion dollar question that most people involved in the online gambling industry - both in the United States and around the world - will be asking themselves with the great news this morning that Democrat Senator, Barack Obama, will be the 44th President of the United States.

It's no secret that under the Bush administration online gambling in the United States has had a hard time of it - to say the least. Once a popular pastime for millions of Americans, in late 2006 online gambling became the focus of a US government 'witch hunt' when the US Congress voted in a bill called UIGEA.

UIGEA (the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) - which was signed into law by George 'Dubya' Bush - was effectively designed to stop Americans from gambling online (who the US government saw as filling up the coffers (by choice no less) of offshore online gambling operators with US dollars).

Being beyond its control, the Bush administration could of course not allow that. Enter the draconian and 'Prohibitionist' UIGEA.

While UIGEA could not prevent Americans from signing up with online gambling destinations - including online casinos, online poker room, online betting sites and online bingo casinos - it could, however, prevent US banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions from processing online gambling-related payments.

That was step one. Step two involved setting America's 'pit bull' on the online gambling operators (who were generating all this money from US online gamblers) in the form of its US Justice Department. So, in 2007 many high-ranking online gambling company executives were arrested while in the United States.

This action had the desired effect - to scare many of the world's largest and most profitable online gambling operations into virtual submission by forcing them to no longer accept US online gamblers. In addition, the US Justice Department also sought hefty financial 'retributions' from some of these larger firms.

The result is that the global online gambling industry took a huge knock as the world's largest online gaming market - America - was now off limits. As such the globe's leading online gambling firms were forced to seek other gaming markets. Hence the growth of online gambling in Europe and particularly Asia.

With a new, far more progressive President now earmarked for the White House, it will be interesting to see if Obama's administration will reverse the online gambling ban. In doing so, it would effectively restore the very rights and freedoms of Americans that were removed with the introduction of UIGEA.

If this were to happen the online gambling industry would do flick flacks down the street in celebration, as they could once again market their online gaming services to a country that has a long and rich history of gambling (Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Reno, sports betting, Kentucky horse racing etc).

But I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

To Barack Obama, congrats on defeating that old 'Bush clone' and here's hoping you'll do great things for your country. More importantly though, we hope you'll serve to restore the world's faith in your country, a faith that Bush and his sewer of cronies have happily been chiseling away at for eight years.

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