Off Shore Gaming Association

This past week saw a dramatic case being brought before the Kentucky 2nd Circuit Court. Governor Steve Beshear asked a judge to cut off access to 141 gambling Web sites by giving Kentucky control of the domain names.

The hypocrisy begins and ends with Gov. Beshear. One of the bullet points on a press release on the Governor’s website states, “The accessibility of the Internet, and the unregulated and private nature of Internet gambling, creates conduits for youths to log on and place wagers.” Yet KY citizens can certainly signup at TwinSpires.com to place wagers on horse racing. Thus, we have to ask, “Is this a calculated attack on Internet wagering?” Hardly. Horse racing can be done at the Twinspires from anywhere in Kentucky, yet the servers are located in Oregon. Betting across state lines (horse wagering does have a carve out in the US code) appears to be OK as long as the host is sanctioned by Kentucky racing.

He goes on to say that illegal Internet gambling deprives the Commonwealth of millions of dollars in revenue. But there are no casinos to place wagers in, no legal poker rooms and obviously no sports betting within the state’s borders. So, where are these missing millions of dollars to go in Kentucky - where are the outlets to play, where are the jobs that should be created?

In speaking with players and industry contacts in Kentucky, we found that this first-term governor used bringing land-based casinos to Kentucky as one of his major campaign points! The reasoning here must be that gambling is good, as long as it benefits the state coffers. On Feb 15th of this year, Beshear unveiled legislation that would allow casino gambling in Kentucky. However, this bill, designed to ammend the state constitution to expand gambling at Kentucky racetracks died in the Kentucky House without even coming to a vote. Yes, this governor wants to amend the state constitution for expanded gaming and at the same time block gambling. How can this be?

Ultimately, the governor can’t actually believe that this domain seizure is going to work. No one is that simple.

In examining the list of 141 domain names, one can easily see that this is only the tip of the Internet gambling juggernaut. There are thousands of gambling sites that are not listed and several companies that should not even be on the list. Several sites listed currently do not take wagers from any US citizens, let alone Kentuckians! In addition, even if the list was inclusive of every gambling website online, these sites are not going to sit by and let Governor Beshear ruin their party. They will simply put up new domains and alert their players . . . ’till the end of time. One casino site on the list, Golden Casino, has already put up a mirror domain and alerted all of their affiliates to being sending traffic to the new URL. Quick Gov., amend the list.

So, if it is not going to work, why waste the time of the legislature and the courts on all of this?

The bottom line is either protectionism or posturing or both. The governor obviously wants to protect the 4 billion dollar Kentucky horse racing industry. The greed and hypocrisy of trying to keep it all for themselves is clearly evident in an ever growing national and global economy. What will the Governor try to prohibit next? Since most toys are not made in Kentucky, perhaps he would not let them be sold there. Those toys did not create and jobs or generate any tax revenue to Kentucky, so send ‘em back to China! Perhaps it makes the good Governor look like he is trying to protect his citizens from the evils of gambling. But, with a flourishing 4B racing industry and a platform that included expanded gambling, the protection that he is trying to implement is not for the citizens, but posturing aimed at the Kentucky blue-bloods who own, train and race horses and, no doubt, contribute to political campaigns.

Give it up Gov.! Your veiled attempt to curtail gambling will not work and will simply cost your state legislators and attorneys valuable time and money that should be better spent on roads, schools health care and viable social programs aimed at improving life in your state.

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We get calls and emails constantly here at OSGA. Hundreds find us every day and they are all asking the same question, “What is the time frame that I can expect a payout?” Not only are we getting this inquiry over and over again, but every sportsbook we have spoken with has also been grilled with the same line of questioning.

Most sportsbooks are quite forthcoming with the information requested by players. But, even the ‘company line’ being given can be far from accurate. The problem, payment processing can change from week to week and even hour by hour.

A perfect example of this is at industry giant Bodog. They state on both their website and when you call to sign up, that players will have to wait up to 40 business days to get a check. Bodog does their best to meet this egregious time-frame, but we have had an inordinate amount of players telling us that they have been waiting since June for their payouts. We have reported the problems at Bodog for some time now and many players have chimed in (see Recent Payout Complaints Valid). Bodog was using Zip Payments and the US government effectively closed them down back in June, causing a huge problem for Bodog, Sportsbook.com and several other books. However, we are beginning to see Bodog making some headway.

This past week we were given a new contact at Bodog, as they have setup a new department to handle payout inquiries/complaints. This has proven to be quite effective. Seven complaints were sent over to the head of this new group at Bodog this week. All seven were answered and three players already received their checks!

Bodog stated to us, “We are essentially caught up on the re-issued checks we saw as a result of the loss of some third party processing relationships. We are now in a position to start chipping away at our current 40 business day time frame for check by courier and will be able to clean-up the back log of payouts that we have incurred.”

So, perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to burn brightly at Bodog.

Still, the question gets asked every day – “When can I expect to get a payout?”

We spoke with many Elite rated sportsbooks this week to get some insights. One company told us that they are working day and night to meet clients’ expectations. “But the players do not understand how hard we are working to make almost every payout happen”, we were told. Several books told us this week that they are now getting some new methods in place and that they have new processors ‘coming on-line’ every week. We have had reports that ATM cards are being issued by some books, and if your book offers it – we urge you to look into getting their card.

However, one player complained that he was given this option at his book after waiting for over a month for a check, with no end in sight. He had them put the withdrawal back in his account and took advantage of the new ATM withdrawal option. The problem: he had to make over a dozen calls to insure that the card was coming and it took a month to arrive. However, when it did – he was able to make 10 withdrawals of $200 each and minus the ATM fee was able to collect $1800 in one day!

Other books are able to get money out rather quickly. A player reported that Diamond Sports was doing well. He asked for a payout on Tuesday and got his check on Friday. WagerWeb also got a player a check the same week as it was requested. Both BetOnline and YouWager were able to get out same-day person-to-person to several players who called in their reports to us. We have even downgraded a couple of books based soley on their payout times. After all, if one book is getting payouts to players in three days and another is taking three weeks, is there really a comparison here?

Thus, payout times vary greatly from book to book. The one thing that we cannot stress enough is for players to have some patience and understand that payout times are no longer an exact science during what is a very difficult time for offshore operators. Every Elite rated sportsbook is getting players their money within a reasonable time. The rest out there are doing their best but often fall short of thier own mark. Still, this could all change in a New York minute. Stay tuned to this space and become an OSGA member for the latest updates.

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