The worst thing that could happen to online gambling in the U.S. would be a series of conflicting regulations set up by different states, similar to the myriad regulations for land-based casinos.
“The industry won’t be able to keep up,” David L. Rebuck, director of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, said recently during a panel discussion at the East Coast Gaming Congress in Atlantic City. “Shame on us if we don’t have those discussions.”
Rebuck, said he has been in touch with regulators in states that have not legalized online gambling, including Susan Hensel, director of licensing at the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, according to Philly.com, online home of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.
“This is a new business. This is not just an extension of bricks and mortar,” Rebuck said.
New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada have legalized online gambling in their states and several more—such as Pennsylvania—have been studying the idea.
If every state adopts its own online regulations, however, as they have with land-based casinos, the on line industry could fail, officials said.
“Eventually this will creak and break down. Companies will not be able to invest the millions of dollars they invested in Nevada and then did again in New Jersey,” said Gil White, a lawyer with Israeli-based Herzog Fox & Neeman who specializes in gaming and e-commerce. “In the internet world, the margins are not big enough for that to work.”
