Online Casino Advertising: Testing the Limits of Commercial Speech

<span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman;"><font face="TimesNewRoman"><p align="left">The advent of the Internet has revolutionized the daily lives of everyone by giving increased access to information and consumer transactions, while also adding change and further complexity to the law. Gambling has adapted to the arrival of the Internet with online sports books</p></font></span><p align="left"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman; font-size: xx-small;">2 </span></span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman;">and online casino gambling,</span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman; font-size: xx-small;">3 </span></span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman;">both developing a presence on the Internet. These new online casinos have begun to advertise both on the Internet and through more traditional broadcasting, like radio and television.</span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman; font-size: xx-small;">4 </span></span><span style="font-family: TimesNewRoman;">As a result, the Department of Justice has begun to crack down on online casino advertisers, primarily by threatening prosecution against advertisers through the Wire Act (18 U.S.C. &sect; 1084).</span></p

The Economics of Lotteries: An Annotated Bibliography

This paper presents an annotated bibliography of all papers relating to the economics of lotteries as of early to mid 2011. All published scholarly papers that could be identified by the authors are included along with the published abstract where available.lotto, lottery, public finance, gambling

U.S. Lotto Markets

Lotteries as sources of public funding are of particular interest because they combine elements of both public finance and gambling in an often controversial mix. Proponents of lotteries point to the popularity of such games and justify their use because of the voluntary nature of participation rather than the reliance on compulsory taxation. Whether lotteries are efficient or not can have the usual concerns related to public finance and providing support for public spending, but there are also concerns about the efficiency of the market for the lottery products as well, especially if the voluntary participants are not behaving rationally. These concerns can be addressed through an examination of the U.S. experience with lotteries as sources of government revenues. State lotteries in the U.S. are compared to those in Europe to provide context on the use of such funding and the diversity of options available to public officials. While the efficiency of lotteries in raising funds for public programs can be addressed in a number of ways, one method is to consider whether the funds that are raised are supplementing other sources of funding or substituting for them. If lottery profits are “fungible” or substituting for other sources that would have been used in the absence of such profits, then the issues of equity and efficiency of lotteries relative to other sources are certainly heightened. The literature suggests that some degree of fungibility does exist, bringing these very concerns into question. Whether the lottery markets are efficient can be addressed, in part, by examining the rationality of its participants. This can be done by considering how consumers participate in the market, how they respond to changing prices (or effective prices in the case of lotteries), and whether the market ever provides its participants with a “fair bet,” a gamble in which there is a positive expected value from participating. While empirical studies provide somewhat mixed results, there are indications that consumers of lottery products are relatively rational and that lottery markets seldom provide “fair bets,” both indicators of efficient markets.lotto, lottery, public finance, gambling

Booms, Busts, and Gambling: Can Gaming Revenues Reduce Budget Volatility?

Over the past 20 years, state and provincial governments in North America have expanded legal gambling opportunities to consumers. One of the primary policy goals of this expansion of gambling opportunities has been to increase government revenues. Gambling is an attractive source of new government revenues because consumers are relatively insensitive to the implicit “tax” rate imposed on gambling activities and gambling is a voluntary activity; only those who chose to gamble are subject to this implicit tax. In this paper, we document the contribution that gambling revenues make to state and provincial tax receipts, and the extent to which variation in gambling revenues contributes to the volatility of tax revenues over time. We adopt an approach from the finance literature. In finance, the relationship of the return to an individual stock to total return in a portfolio, or total return the entire stock market, is often summarized by a “Beta” which can be estimated from actual returns on portfolios and individual stocks. We investigate the contribution of gambling revenue, and revenue from other sources, to variation in total government revenues, by estimating a beta for various government revenue sources in states and provinces in North America over the period 1989-2009. The estimated betas for gambling revenue in many provinces and states are negative, indicating that variation in gaming revenue has negative correlation with variation in own source revenues, reducing the variation in total state and provincial revenue over time.gambling, lottery, public finance

The Legalization and Control of Casino Gambling

This article seeks to demonstrate that the spread of legalized gambling is inevitable as states recognize the immense revenue generating capabilities of casinos. However, in order to realize these revenues and take advantage of them, without incurring the potential negative social side affects, states must control and regulate casinos. Thus, this article examines, through their theoretical structure and practical realities, the four different methods for legalized casino gambling regulation: (1) Nevada\u27s free enterprise model; (2) New Jersey\u27s and Puerto Rico\u27s tourist area revitalization model; (3) England\u27s strict social control model; and (4) the model of complete or partial state ownership

The Economics of Lotteries: A Survey of the Literature

Lotteries represent an important source of government revenues in many states and countries, so they are of interest to public finance economists. In addition, lotteries provide researchers interested in microeconomic theory and consumer behavior with a type of experimental lab that allows economists to explore these topics. This paper surveys the existing literature on lotteries organized around these two central themes. The first section examines the microeconomic aspects of lotteries including consumer decision-making under uncertainty, price and income elasticities of demand for lottery tickets, cross-price elasticities of lottery ticket to each other and to other gambling products, consumer rationality and gambling, and the efficiency of lottery markets. The second section covers topics related to public finance and public choice including the revenue potential of lotteries, the tax efficiency and dead-weight loss of lottery games, the horizontal and vertical equity of lotteries, earmarking and the fungibility of lottery revenues, and individual state decisions to participate in participate in public lotteries.lotto, lottery, public finance, gambling

The Legalization and Control of Casino Gambling

This article seeks to demonstrate that the spread of legalized gambling is inevitable as states recognize the immense revenue generating capabilities of casinos. However, in order to realize these revenues and take advantage of them, without incurring the potential negative social side affects, states must control and regulate casinos. Thus, this article examines, through their theoretical structure and practical realities, the four different methods for legalized casino gambling regulation: (1) Nevada\u27s free enterprise model; (2) New Jersey\u27s and Puerto Rico\u27s tourist area revitalization model; (3) England\u27s strict social control model; and (4) the model of complete or partial state ownership

A Winning Hand: A Proposal for an International Regulatory Schema with Respect to the Growing Online Gambling Dilemma in the United States

While a multitude of Internet enterprises folded in the 1990s, online gambling websites not only have held strong, but appear to be ready to increase the stakes. No business relating to the Internet currently generates more revenue than online gambling, and that trend does not look like it will change soon. While many Americans desire to participate in this form of cyber-gambling, the current legality of their ability to do so remains vague. For the most part, an American\u27s ability to gamble currently resides under the purview of state law and a hodgepodge of antiquated federal wire acts. The nature of the Internet, however, mandates that any scheme, regulatory or prohibitory, be constructed in the international arena. For various reasons, there have been efforts by members of Congress to create strong prohibitory legislation specifically targeting Internet gambling. The Author analyzes not only whether a domestic prohibition schema is the best model to implement, but also whether such a model could even be truly effective. The Author further shows that an international regulatory model can provide a legitimate method of control while allowing individual countries to maintain discretion over the form of online gambling they allow to their citizens. At the same time, this international regulatory schema would still provide a valid international enforcement net against offenders. Under this regulatory schema, problem gamblers can be protected while still preserving the opportunity for other patrons to get lucky and hit it big

The Time Is Now: Why the United States Should Adopt the British Model of Sports Betting Legislation

Gambling has been the subject of controversy since its inception. While some claim that it is a “gentleman’s game” and a means of social entertainment, others argue that it is a sinful endeavor that enables corruption, scandal, and addiction. Today, there are several different types of gambling that occur in the United States—all with varying degrees of legality and regulation. For example, betting on horse racing is legal throughout the United States, and state-sanctioned lotteries are present in forty-four of fifty states.3 Commercial casinos, like those in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, are regulated on a state-by-state basis, and gambling on card games is legal in over twenty states (and counting). This Note focuses on betting in professional sports, which is more tightly con-trolled than any of the other games of chance. With the prevalence of daily fantasy sports and the tentative merger between its two largest providers, FanDuel and DraftKings, sports betting has been at the forefront of the news as it relates to gaming law. The United States has taken a strict regulatory approach toward sports betting, which is inconsistent with its stance toward other types of gambling, such as slot machines, horse racing, lotteries, and, most recently, daily fantasy sports. On the other side of the Atlantic, the United Kingdom has taken a drastically different approach. According to a study on gam-bling prevalence conducted in 2010, over seventy-three percent of the British population have engaged in some form of gambling. While there were certainly issues of concern with the legalization of sports betting, the U.K. Parliament believed it would be counterintuitive to outright prohibit a multi-billion dollar industry, especially one with overwhelming participation by a majority of the population. Part I of this Note examines the history of sports betting and discusses its origins and the motivations behind the legislation in both countries, such as notorious betting scandals in professional sports. Part II reviews the federal framework currently in place in the United States by surveying the history and implementation of the Wire Act and discussing the legislative history and subsequent enactment of PASPA. Part II also considers one of the latest attacks on these laws by state governments. Part III analyzes the sports betting landscape in the United Kingdom by reviewing the history of sports betting internationally and presenting a discussion of the laws that regulate legal sports gambling in the United Kingdom. Part III also examines the Betting and Gaming Act of 1960—the first major change in the United Kingdom’s betting policy—and reviews the Gambling Act of 2005 (on which this Note intends to base its model). Part IV proposes that the United States should adopt the U.K. model of sports betting legislation, wherein Congress should follow the lead set by the U.K. Parliament, and dis-cusses the economic benefits of a legalized sports betting industry. This Note concludes that the United States should set up a gaming commission and legalize sports betting nationwide, while regulating it to protect against corruption