Senate Online Gambling Hearing Produces Little Progress

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Friday, July 19th, 2013 | Written by Shane Larson

The worlds of online gambling and Washington D.C. politics collided again last week.

This time, it was members of the U.S. Senate who gathered at a hearing devoted to a general exploration of the consumer protection issues involved in online gambling.

The hearing was conducted by the United States Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance. The official title of the hearing was “The Expansion of Internet Gambling: Assessing Consumer Protection Concerns.”

If that sounds like a broad topic to cover in the space of around an hour, it is. As a result, the hearing ended up being a slightly unfocused jog through a hodge-podge of issues and positions.

As for the motivation behind the hearing, Committee Chairman Sen. Rockefeller expressed his belief in a need to “take a hard look at consumer protections, and how we’re going to fix any existing gaps that allow underage gambling or otherwise leave consumers vulnerable to fraud and abuse.”

Hearing highlighted range of opinions in play

Four witnesses provided the Subcommittee with a mix of expert opinion and the attitudes of their constituents.

National Fraternal Order of Police Chief Chuck Canterbury offered the view of the members of law enforcement that he represents. The thrust of Canterbury’s position was that unregulated online gambling presents a real and substantial danger, and that current laws simply do not provide law enforcement with the tools necessary to combat that threat.

Matt Smith, President of Catholic Advocate, did not dispute the harms of unregulated online gambling, but argued strenuously against the concept of expanded regulated online gambling as a solution to the negative impacts of unregulated online gambling activity.

Presenting additional professional expertise to the Subcommittee were Thomas Grissen, CEO of Daon and lawyer Jack Blum. There were no witnesses speaking on behalf of the online gambling industry (regulated or unregulated).

While the Senators did engage in some back-and-forth with witnesses, little new ground was tread, and no clear consensus emerged.

An archived version of the hearing is available for streaming here.

Comes only weeks after introduction of new House bill to regulate online poker

The Senate hearing is the second significant piece of news involving online gambling and the federal government in the month of July.

The first, of course, came with the decision by Rep. Joe Barton to (once again) introduce a bill in the House to federally regulate online poker.

That bill, titled The Internet Poker Freedom Act, was not directly connected to the Senate hearing in question. Barton recently indicated that he has not been in direct contact with his Senate counterparts regarding development a companion bill in the Senate for Barton’s legislation.

No firm word on what, if anything, comes next

The issue of the legality of online poker in America has been an unresolved one for more than a decade at this point.

So the natural reaction of people to a hearing like this is something along the lines of: “what comes next?”

The answer is not an encouraging one. While the hearing certainly helps to raise the profile of the issue in Washington D.C., it’s not part of any formal process toward a Senate bill. Nor is there any next meeting or hearing triggered by this meeting, at least not directly.

In short, there’s a good chance that nothing will come directly of this hearing. And in the meantime, states like Delaware will continue to make concrete progress regulating online gambling and online poker, further reducing the need for and viability of federal action on the issue.