Online sports betting and lottery

Have you ever heard the name Virginia Seitz? If you follow the progress of the regulation of online gambling, it is a name you should know. On Sept. 20, 2011, newly-confirmed Assistant Attorney General Virginia Seitz of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) wrote a 13-page legal opinion that stated the federal Wire Act of 1961 only applies to sports betting.
This opinion was written in response to a request made in 2009 by the New York lottery division and the Illinois governor’s office to clarify if selling lottery tickets to adults within their own borders over the Internet fell under the Wire Act.
According to a Forbes article written on March 30, 2012, called “Why Can’t You Buy Your $640 Million Lottery Ticket Online?,” Seitz concluded, “nothing in the materials supplied by the Criminal Division suggests that the New York or Illinois lottery plans involve sports wagering, rather than garden-variety lotteries. Accordingly, we conclude that the proposed lotteries are not within the prohibition of the Wire Act.”
Though the decision was written in September 2011, it was released three months later under the radar on December 23, 2011, the Friday before the Christmas weekend. A mere three months after that, on March 25, 2012, the Illinois lottery became the first U.S. lottery to sell tickets on the Internet. As for the New York Lottery, New York State Gaming Commission Acting Executive Director Robert Williams said in a statement, “In New York, we are examining our options for Internet gaming and what the best strategy will be for us going forward.”
As I asked at the beginning of this article, who is the woman behind such a seismic shift in the government’s stance on Internet gambling?
Being in the office only ninety days, Seitz authored one of the most sweeping reinterpretations of a law that had been used by law enforcement to fight organized crime for 50 years. Isn’t it strange someone who was still looking for the exits and where to eat lunch took on as her first major assignment an issue that had been sitting in that office for two years?
Seitz, a Rhodes Scholar, was a partner in the law firm of Sidley Austin, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Sidley Austin, the law firm where Michelle Obama was working as an associate when she met Barack Obama, is one of the country’s largest corporate law firms, generating over a billion dollars in annual revenue. On January 5, 2011, President Barack Obama nominated Seitz to be the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).
Two of the OLC’s bosses, William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, became Supreme Court Justices. Newsweek characterized the OLC as “the most important government office you’ve never heard of.” The same label can be applied to Sidley Austin as the people who come from that law firm often go on to work for the government at its highest levels.
The estimated revenue that can be generated by online poker pales in comparison to the numbers that will be generated by online lottery ticket sales. The legal age in both New York and Illinois to buy a lottery ticket is 18 years of age, compared to 21 for gambling, which greatly expands the player base.
Hundreds of lottery games are being created that combine sports, poker and anything else they can think of. On the Illinois lottery webpage, for example, they sell lottery tickets that benefit charitable causes, such as breast cancer and MS.
Online lottery will be the platform to launch other gambling games. Most lottery commissions welcome the task of controlling all online gaming. Right now in California the lottery is one of the obstacles keeping online gaming from moving forward.
Online ticket sales for the lottery is the sleeping giant of the Internet gaming world, and it looks like President Barack Obama, using the OLC, might be the stealth advocate for online gambling. President Obama and the Democratic Party may be the biggest proponents for the expansion of online gaming in all its forms, and the sale of lottery tickets on the Internet is just the beginning.
The DOJ’s narrowing of the interpretation of the Wire Act by Seitz opened the floodgates for the legalization of all forms of online gambling. Without the lottery, there would be no online gaming. I’m sure in the next election the legalization and regulation of online poker and sports betting will be a political hot topic. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is in the midst of this battle right now.

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