ANOTHER U.S. LEGAL LOOPHOLE?

31 October 2008

LottoIP to offer online gambling

 

Canadian company Lotto IP.com feels it has a solution to offering legal online gambling in the United States market that is "as easy as purchasing a Powerball lottery ticket."

The company has developed a simple business method whereby tickets issued by US state or Canadian provincial lottery retailers can now carry unique validation codes that will allow the bearer to log onto a state-controlled gaming site.

Ticket purchasers can then access popular on-site games such as Texas Hold’em, slots, or Blackjack and play against the site or other ticket buyers, later redeeming their online winnings at a local lottery retail outlet.

The key to the Game With Us concept is that it provides public officials with the ability to define a regionally specific audience for an online site while employing traditional local lottery regulations, infrastructure and resources, say company spokesmen.

The method would likely operate on the same business rules, sales strategies and operational models as existing state lottery offerings, using technological assets to leverage existing online casino and poker products that are well proven and inexpensive to implement due to the maturity of the market.

“We’re already in discussion with a number of U.S. state legislatures as well as Congress at the federal level and there is significant excitement being generated around the impact this could have on the public and private gaming sectors,” claims Edward McBride in a statement from Lotto IP. “In some districts laws are being crafted now to permit the application of the new Lotto IP method and we expect to start signing agreements over the next 24 months.”

Lotto IP has not stated whether it will run the licensing operations generated by its new method itself or if it will be seeking an outright buyer for the process, but it has revealed that is in discussions with major private sector online and offline gaming providers who may be interested.

“Essentially for these companies it’s a question of how they can be a part of the inevitable transformation that this will bring to the sector,” McBride says. “No matter what their decision, however, the impact that this will have is going to cause significant repercussions to the market share of existing private gaming sites and to how online gaming will be delivered in the future.”

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