LEGAL ONLINE SPORTSBETTING IN THE USA INEVITABLE, SAYS OFFSHORE PIONEER

26 October 2007

Veteran exec predicts that legal Internet sportsbetting will be in place within a few years


Steve Budin, a former Miami street bookmaker and industry guru who became an offshore sports betting pioneer when he set up shop in Central America in the early nineties has a vision for online sportsbetting in the USA, and predicts that legal Internet sportsbetting in the country will be in place within the next few years.

Interviewed in the Las Vegas Sun, Budin said that the current legal sports betting industry in the U.S. is almost hopelessly behind the times, but that Nevada's big gaming companies will begin taking sports bets from gamblers online via a legal, regulated Internet-based national sports book soon.

The veteran stresses the need for the majors to go mainstream with sports betting: "The way that it makes sense is not the traditional brick-and-mortar setup, where it takes eight guys to work a room that's 2 000 square feet. The way to handle it is on the Internet, to the masses, where people can bet $10 or $15 from their home, and it doesn't matter whether one person is playing or 1 000 people are playing. It costs the same amount of money to take the bets," he opines.

"To think that Las Vegas is not going to offer that in the next three years is a little shortsighted."

Budin has little respect for the manner in which the Bush Administration is handling Internet sports gambling issues, commenting that its track record is marred by a toxic daily double of ineptitude and hypocrisy. He points out that rather than taking a creative approach in dealing with offshore gambling, an estimated $10 billion to $12 billion a year industry, the US government has resorted to grandstanding tactics such as arresting offshore bookies when their flights land in the United States.

"They're saying they want to know when the next CEO (of an offshore betting operation) lands at LaGuardia, like he's the next shoe bomber," Budin said. He added that legislation designed to crack down on offshore betting is a stopgap solution at best - helpless to halt the forces of demand and technology.

"They want to stop the billions of dollars flowing out of the country, but I'm sure they realized that the business was going to fall back into the hands of street-based bookmakers, traditionally affiliated with the mob," Budin said.

"But at least when a local bookie has money, he goes out to the local restaurant, he buys a new suit. When the money goes offshore it's gone forever."

Budin made his fortune taking bets by telephone at his sports book based in Panama and later Costa Rica, before the U.S. government intervened and shut him down, and tells his story in a recently released memoir, "Bets, Drugs and Rock & Roll: The Rise and Fall of the World's First Offshore Sports Gambling Empire."

"It's important to remember that 99 percent of sports gamblers bet within their means and never have a problem in their lives," Budin told the Las Vegas Sun.

The average single sports bet on the Internet is about $14, according to Budin. "You're not talking about people betting their mortgage," he generalises.

Widespread legalisation is the best way to counter organised crime interests," Budin contends. "They're scared to go mainstream with it thinking it will be controlled by the mob - but that's what's keeping it controlled by the mob," said Budin. "Vegas had no problem throwing out the mob when the big corporations wanted their slot machine revenue. Who's tougher than the big corporations? Certainly no mob family."

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