Very interesting announcement from LVS today - they plan to start an online casino.
Nevada regulated companies have tried this in the past - MGM Mirage had their WagerWorks system that they shutdown in 2004.
US citizens are prohibited from gambling in online casinos and the laws surrounding that have recently gotten stronger with the government taking aim at the financial institutions used to move the money around. Despite it being illegal, online gambling in the US is widespread.
I think this is fascinating. Online gaming is such a lucrative market, I'm not surprised these guys want a piece. I hope this works well and proves that these operators can run reliable games.
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WagerWorks is still around. It's a division of IGT now.
Due to the ongoing restrictions I'm not sure what the extent of their product is. At G2E they had a Windows PC with an application running a Cleopatra slot machine with full graphics and sound. Every time you pushed Spin it would contact a server somewhere and communicate with it, so I'm guessing it is networked online.
The actual language of the recent online gaming legislation actually allows for on-line gaming within a state, provided the state allows it, and provided that the operator is licensed by that state for gaming. Now, the concept of the internet stopping at state borders is ludicrous, but given that wording I've been expecting the licensed brick/mortar gaming companies to do agreements with the online technology owners. There will probably more legislation on this in a non-election year.