World Sports Leagues Want U.S. Regulation of Online Casinos
Both online casinos and sports regulating groups are calling for greater cooperation between the two in preventing gambling scandals. Early Warning System, a group responsible for watching World Cup and Summer Olympics wagering patterns, hosted a sports betting conference in Switzerland to discuss problems and possible solutions.
FIFA has just released an announcement that sports gambling may be the biggest problem facing soccer, especially in regards to the illegal and unregulated Asian betting market. In response, online gambling operator Bwin's CEO, Norbert Teufelberger, pushed for organizations to use their political power to urge for national regulation of sports gambling.
Referring to such events as the World Cup and the Olympics, Teufelberger said, "Our idea would be that only countries with a modern, regulated sports betting regime can be part of that family and organize those events."
The overriding idea from the conference seems to be the creation of an agency spanning all major sports, using input from legitimate, licensed online casinos to monitor and investigate Internet gambling oddities.
Such organizations as Interpol sided with the British Horseracing Industry in foreseeing cooperation and regulation as key in preventing organized crime from controlling the gambling activity, as is the case in Asia. Early Warning System's Wolfgang Feldner said, "I think this could be the way. A worldwide organization which is monitoring betting and analyzing in a central system."
Legalized and regulated gambling is essential to the system. As conference attendees pointed out, bans like that in the United States simply leads to black market activity. While U.S. sports leagues continue to lobby against any regulated Internet gambling, they cut themselves off from their best source of wagering information.
International sports leagues and organizations may pressure the U.S. to join forces and devise regulatory systems for licensed online casinos, or face being shut out of hosting major international competitions.
