Nevada Senator Wants All Online Casino Games Banned, Except Poker

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Monday, February 24th, 2014 | Written by Charles Washington

Nevada Senator Dean Heller expects a federal bill to be introduced to the Senate next month banning all types of regulated casino games from the internet, with the exception of online poker. Furthermore, the Republican Senator says that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) has lent his full support on the issue, and that both U.S.congressmen will now take bold steps aimed at restoring the Wire Act (1961) to its original interpretation.

“Heller and U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., have been working together to come up with a bill to restore the Wire Act, which used to prohibit Internet gambling until the Obama administration several years ago loosened the law to allow Illinois to offer lottery tickets online,” explained an article which appeared in the Las Vegas Review Journal.

What would Heller’s federal bill look like?

This is not the first time efforts have been made to pass internet gambling legislation in the U.S. Senate. In 2012, for instance, Harry Reid and now-retired Arizona Senator Jon Kyl tried but failed to push their ‘Internet Gambling Prohibition, Poker Consumer Protection, and Strengthening UIGEA Act’ through the Senate, which would have stopped all online gambling, with the exception of online poker and online lottery sales. Currently, Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson is also lobbying hard to gain support for his ‘Internet Gambling Control Act’, designed to revise the Wire Act to include both online casino games, as well poker.

As far as Nevada Senator Dean Heller’s bill is concerned, in addition to including a carveout for poker, which he describes as taking “a little more skill,” other exemptions from his piece of legislation are likely to include Horseracing, which is protected by the Horseracing Act of 1978, and Fantasy sports and online lottery sales.

“There is no daylight between where Senator Reid and myself are on this particular issue, explained Senator Dean Heller. “We don’t want it to be just a Nevada issue. Harry and I are trying to look for help from [other Senators] to come forward with legislation that provides a long term solution.”

Nevada a key concern for Heller

Protecting Nevada remains one of the key concerns for Heller, with the Senator expressing his concerns that online gaming would have some serious long-term implications on the Silver State’s gambling industry. Highlighting the fact around 16 states are currently considering internet gambling legislation, Heller says gamblers would be less likely to travel to Nevada for recreational gambling if, for instance, a regulated online gambling market in California meant they could gamble from home back in Palm Springs, Southern California or San Diego.

The Senator has also admitted to liaising with Sheldon Adelson and his ‘Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling’ and especially their fears concerning problem and underage gambling. Echoing Adelson’s arguments, Heller, commented:

“To have the Wild Wild West as an empire of gambling for the country would have some serious social implications..I think that is what he [Adelson] is concerned with.”

Unlike Adelson, who has labelled poker “a toxin which all good people ought to resist,” Heller, on the other hand, appears to have no problem with permitting the game online

“Games like poker, that I think take a little more skill [than games of chance], if there was a caveat or carve-out for Internet poker, I’d be fine with that.”

Heller’s Bill potentially damaging for Nevada Industry

A fundamental point Senator Dean Heller (R-Nev) seems to have overlooked is the fact the 1961 Wire Act never covered intrastate gaming and that unlike poker, where larger player pools are necessary for a viable industry, casino games pit players against the house and so require neither interstate cross-overs or player liquidity.

Secondly, a law forbidding online casino games would also affect many of Nevada’s brick and mortar casino companies which have already invested millions of dollars in their online casino products, including Boyd Gaming, Caesars Entertainment, Golden Nugget and MGM Resorts. Furthermore, companies such as Caesars Entertainment and Station Casinos have invested in extending their online gambling business into New Jersey, and in the future hope to expand into other regulated online gaming markets. Shutting the online gambling industry would therefore not only affect these companies’ revenues at a time when Nevada is struggling to cope with its own slow economic recovery, but would also impact the state’s potential for job growth.

Nevertheless, lawmakers in the other regulated markets of Delaware and New Jersey are unlikely to support a bill sponsored by a Nevada politicians telling them how to run their gaming businesses. Furthermore, online gaming proponents in these states will resent not being able to profit from offering their expertise to other potential regulated states in the future, while anti-internet gambling groups will still simply see the bill as an expansion of gambling.