Online Sports Betting: Legal or Unlawful?
Sports betting or gambling has become more and more popular through the years. Its popularity was further intensified together with the growth of online sports betting, generally known as internet gambling. However, online sports betting have always been the topic of most controversies. And, one specific area of discussion is its legality.
Usually, in terms of considering online sports betting, it is so common for anyone to wonder if theyre breaching any local or state law. As you might know, sports betting have been deemed illegal in several countries on this planet, and one particular area that strongly uphold anti-sports betting law is definitely the North America. In this region, most states and even the government have passed legislations about whether or how it’s lawful or otherwise to gamble online, and offline.
However, it is just until recently that this regulating online sports betting remained entirely to the discretion of the individual states in North America, and to some extent, the dawn of online sports betting created certain degrees of confusion concerning the jurisdiction. One main question that prevails is who runs the laws within the virtual world. As you might know, a few of the current gambling laws were generally created and proposed before the coming of the internet. This fact is what actually makes the application to those established laws accessible to different interpretation.
Besides the question about the online sports betting laws, another question was raised by the concerned public, which is, if it is legal to operate sports betting on the web or offshore and take action from clients in the United States? Well, the common answer to this by the US government is always that offshore or online sports betting are not legal.
So it is given that online sports betting are deemed illegal with the US government. However, numerous reports have revealed that no bills happen to be passed to prevent the concept of online sports betting. Much worse is the fact that, several attempts to pass bills in order to prevent the enduring rise in popularity of online sports betting dramatically failed.
Perhaps a particular reason that caused the failure of the passing of those anti-sports gambling laws is that the government has placed most of the responsibility of the legislations for gambling in the hands of individual states, in which a few of these states have approved the concept of online sports gambling.
A number of those states in fact voted on legalizing the online sports betting, and North Dakota is one of them. On the other hand, there are other states like Illinois that have added certain legislations that strictly prohibit the promotion of internet casinos within the state. As far as I know, only three states in the US have strongly prohibited its people from gambling past the state borders: California, Louisiana and Nevada.
Today, since some states have enforced anti-gambling laws, although loosely, several sportsbooks on the internet have decided to remain offshore in foreign countries. And, to avoid breaching the laws, they rather put in place their computer servers also offshore. It is just somehow essential to remember that although anti-gambling laws are passed, no citizen has been arrested for considering online sports betting.