Is Sen. Reid about to put a spoke in the online gambling wheel?

A report in the publication Global Gaming Business has industry observers talking this week; citing a “high ranking source” GGB claimed that Senate Majority Leader and Nevada Democrat Harry Reid has been threatening to toughen up the Wire Act in an unspecified way if a federal legalisation solution is not achieved.

No substantiation for the report has yet been found, but it is common knowledge that there does not seem to be much appetite in the US Congress for the two legalisation bills currently in the mill – one by New York Rep. Peter King and one by Texas Rep. Joe Barton .

Our readers will recall that the Justice Department’s abrupt change of policy on the Wire Act in December 2011 – acknowledging that the Wire Act applied only to internet sports betting – triggered wide-ranging considerations of online gambling opportunities at state level.

So far that has led to individual legalisations in Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware, and on-going debate in several other states.

Reid has himself experienced conspicuous failure in trying to get limited legalisation bills through Congress, taking the line preferred by the major land gambling companies in the US of legalising only online poker, and even then under restrictions which would favour domestic firms.

Global Gaming Business says that Reid is intent on calling a halt to state-by-state legalisation initiatives, although such an ambition comes rather late in the day.

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