Economist Article and Editorial |
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Posted Tue Oct 10, 2006 2:17 pm GMT by lwestatbus
This week's issue (Oct 7th-13th--vol 381, no 8498) of The Economist has a brief editorial and an excellent two-page article on the recent US legislation to prohibit gambling payments. For those not familiar with the publication, The Economist offers extradorinarily well researched reporting and analysis of a huge range of issues and this article is no exception to the publication's usual quality. I encourage all to pick it up at the newsstand.
The article doesn't have much in the way of immediate prophesies on how the most recent legislation will play out for online players, though it did term the law "largely symbolic". It gave more weight to the series of arrests of online gaming executives who had the bad judgment to expose themselves to US jurisdiction while traveling.
The article has a tremendous analysis, however, of how recent industry changes, including the more permissive and protective UK online gaming environment, may affect the industry. An interesting point was how the share price drops in the publicly traded gaming firms made these firms more attractive and vulnerable to takeovers from US operations anxious to get their foot in the door. (It is my understanding that US firms have an important regulatory barrier to such a move but I'm not positive of this.)
A second interesting point was how moves like this have the tendancy to drive consumers into more risky and unsavory environments as the more responsible and regulated firms withdraw from the industry in the face of regulatory threat.
The article also has some interesting economic history of the online betting industry.
Finally, the article is written in the publication's usual dryly humorous prose style that it adopts when it wants to highlight the overt idiocy of a situation, individual, or policy without coming right out and labeling it as such. I recommend the read.
[Edit: I just found that the article is available from the publication's web site. Visit http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7997055.
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