August 23, 2010 (CAP News Wire) – “We’re an offline business in an online world,” Iowa Lottery Director Terry Rich recently told the Quad-City Times Editorial Board, explaining a new strategy to expand the state’s online lottery system to include a more lucrative online gaming system. “The lottery online world will be in hand-held phones, iPads and other personal devices, he believes.”
The statement marks Iowa’s lottery officials as the latest to embrace a state-run online gaming system (of the kind that avoids any sort of UIGEA problems) as the logical solution to a period of low state economic revenues.
New Hampshire recently had the same idea, and the struggles in California to legalize its own special network of Internet poker speaks to the same desire.
Much of this talk has been inspired by the recent legislative success of Barney Frank’s online gambling bill, H.R. 2267, the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act. The question is, what will arrive first: A new, federal system of regulating online gambling, or these state-by-state regulatory plans, which would enable online gambling of the sort that would leave current casino affiliate marketers out in the cold?
Online casino affiliates based in the U.S. can do their part to help ensure their businesses aren’t left out of their rightful place in this new economic boom by contacting their state (and federal) representatives and letting them know just what kind of online gambling should be made legal, and which kinds are going to hurt the U.S. citizens who already make their livings (or part of their livings) in the iGaming world.