GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 11 - January 2010

By Vin Narayanan Insome industries,adecade ismerelyablip in thespace-timecontinuum. In the online gambling industry, a decade is practically a lifetime. So as the calendar turns from the aughts to the teens andwe lookback at theprevious decade, we see an eramarked by rapid growth,market and industry altering earthquakes, arrests, trials, recession andnew and emerging growth areas. And that doesn’t includeany forumdrama!! Online Gaming Stories of theDecade In its first few years, the online gambling industrywas the like thewild,wildAmeri- can West of yesteryear. There were no “official” lawsand rulesgoverning it.Any- thingwent, as longasyoucoulddodge the bullets. But all of that changed in 2000 whenGibraltar and the Isle ofManbegan offering sports betting licenses, and the Alderney Gambling Control Commission established itself. Other jurisdictions had offered online gaming licensesprior to2000. TheKahn- awake Gaming Commission enacted its regulations during the summer of 1999. But Gibraltar, the Isle of Man and Alder- ney were self-governing U.K. territories, with cultural, political and legal touch- stones rootedwithin theU.K., thus giving their licenses a sense of credibility that other jurisdictions lacked. Online gaming software provider Cryp- tologic also listed itself on the NASDAQ stock exchange in2000. And all of a sud- den, online gamingwent from something on the legal fringes to an industry being regulated by well-scrutinized rules and laws. While these baby steps toward regula- tion were occurring in Europe, the legal battle against online gambling was gear- ing up in the United States. In February of 2000,World Sports Exchange founder Jay Cohen was found guilty of operating a sportsbettingbusiness that tookwagers fromAmericansover thephoneand Inter- net. He was the first American convicted of violating the Wire Act for accepting sports bets offshore via the Internet. He was sentenced to21months inprisonand fined $5,000. Cohen ended up serving 17 months inprisonandonemonth inahalf- wayhouse. Cohenand21otherswere indictedfortheir involvement inWorldSportsExchange in 1998. Cohen voluntarily returned from Antigua, where the site was housed and licensed, inaneffort toclearhisnameand legitimize the industry. 12 Online Gaming Stories of the Decade