subject: Sports betting illegal in the USA [print this page] Sports betting illegal in the USA Sports betting illegal in the USA
According to the United States Court of Appeals for the fifth circuit "sport betting is illegal through means of electronic communication". This decision was made in November 2002 and had to be confirmed by a lower court. This is because most states have their own laws for the different kinds of sports betting. But betting providers need a suitable license and no state in the USA is issuing any license to offer bets legally, even though the United States government allows individual sports betting. The government is now using its resources to ban websites which play an important role in facilitating sports betting to the general public of the United States. It also wants to bring an end to the websites providing aid in payments associated with sports betting financials.
When the internet became a common every-day feature in the late 1990s and in the beginning of 2000, online gambling became very popular. At first, it looked like there was going to be an exemption from punishment because US legislators and law implementers were not quite sure how to deal with these doings. In due course, the United States started tracing down the providers that were targeting US clients. But there was a major problem: there is no specific law in the US, which bans or forbids online sports betting. Since there wasn't any certainty about sports betting via telephone and internet either, the whole gaming issue started to create a great uncertainty.
Ultimately, the United States Department of Justice successfully acted against US Friendly companies who were providing sports betting services to United States citizens. Further, they released a warning to companies who were advertising sports betting, but the small island of Antigua managed to organize an appeal against the United States in an international court. As a consequence, some states in the United States have now already decided to make sports betting legal and the United States Federal Government is now starting to find it meaningless to waste time on an action that has always been legal in many parts of world anyway.
In the end the only thing that happened is that a huge grey area has been created in the United States with many Indian reserves such as the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory, where the local gaming commission offers licenses to a growing amount of online sportsbooks that also accept US-customers. Some people thinkthat Congress should legalize online betting in general, and that they should simply put tax on it like they do in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
