Gambling News by Gambling Headquarters

The US is discriminating against foreign gambling companies by banning payments to betting Web sites, said Charlie McCreevy, commissioner for the European Union's internal market. McCreevy told a panel of lawmakers on Tuesday that the EU should complain to the US over the October 13 bar to online gaming. McCreevy, who doesn't have authority over external trade, said he'll ask his staff to raise the issue with his colleague in charge of trade, Peter Mandelson. "In order to protect, I'd say, their own business, their industry there, they have de facto prevented foreigners from online betting into the United States," McCreevy said at the European Parliament in Brussels. To journalists afterward he labeled it "a protectionist measure." The legislation seeks to close the business to people in the US, representing half of the world's Internet gaming market. Its backers argued that a past ban on online gaming in the US had just pushed the business offshore. A spokesman for the US in Brussels declined to comment, saying it was premature to respond to remarks by a commissioner where no action has been taken. To crimp the flow of funds to betting sites, Congress passed the bill September 30 to bar credit card companies from processing payments to such businesses. Bush signed the measure into law on October 13. Online gaming shares plunged and companies including Sportingbet Plc, Leisure & Gaming Plc, PartyGaming Plc and Empire Online Ltd. ceased US operations or sold them for nominal amounts. "It is probably a restrictive practice and we might take it up in another forum," McCreevy said at the EU Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. Asked by journalists afterward if that referred to a World Trade Organization complaint, McCreevy said, "The WTO talks have enough to be going on with at the present time without adding this in. It's not something that has major momentum." The US is contesting a WTO decision from 2004, based on a complaint brought by Antigua and Barbuda, that the ban on Internet gaming is illegal. A group representing US casino operators such as Harrah's Entertainment Inc. and MGM Mirage has pushed Congress to fund a study of whether online gambling could be regulated, as a possible way to get into the business themselves.