Eventually one day online gambling will be legalized in the United States. Goldman Sachs, an American investment bank predicted the legalization in a note to their investors last week.
According to one report, a legal online casino and poker market could be worth up to $12 billion, with the numbers too great for lawmakers to ignore.
“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,” the bank said.
“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.”
The conclusions reached in this report were based on a “grossing up” of the PartyGaming`s intake and related to its 9% of the markets share. In 2008 the American poker market was valued to be worth around $1.5 billion.
Goldman Sachs also added that efforts to help regulate online gambling on a federal level, which could take time, will take longer than efforts on the state level, where we will see progress made at a faster rate.
It was recently reported that hearings on legislation introduced by US Congressman Barney Frank (D – MA) to overturn laws against online gambling have been delayed until at least September.
Congressman Frank recently reported that he is pushing to overturn the laws prohibiting online gambling with hearings beginning in September.
Congressman Frank has worked very diligently since 2006 to overturn the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) that was enacted that year that banned Internet gambling by outlawing the transfer of funds from a financial institution to a gambling website.
If online poker has a friend in Congress, it’s Frank. Thus far, he’s recruited at least 50 other senators and representatives of the US Congress to support his efforts to legalize and regulate online gambling activity in the US.