The CEO of the world’s biggest gambling company, Sheldon Adelson of the Las Vegas Sands Corp, published in an op-ed piece in Forbes Magazine said that online gambling, including online poker, is both “immoral” and “dangerous”. In response, online poker players and online casino gambling fans numbering in the thousands have begun planning to boycott The Venetian Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, owned by Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp.
The Venetian is a 14,000 square foot facility with 59 tables. After online poker and online gambling legislation has passed for intrastate gambling within Delaware, New Jersey, and Nevada, the next states to be considering legalizing online gambling are California and Pennsylvania, prompting Adelson to pen and publish his blistering opinion piece.
In Adelson’s letter, he says both that online gambling can be a “societal train wreck waiting to happen”, losing people their houses and having dangerous effects on children and teens, and that it threatens the jobs in land-based casinos. He cites a 20% drop in land-based casino visitation in Europe ever since the legalization of online poker and online gambling there.
Others, like California attorney Martin D. Owens who specializes in Internet and interactive gaming describes Adelson’s concerns as “preposterous”. Owens co-authored the Internet Gaming Law. He cites online horse betting as one way the Internet gaming has already been legal without such societal repercussions for years. Worldwide, Internet gaming is a $30 billion industry with a good half of that attributed to online poker alone.