One of the more disturbing aspects of the Feds shutting down the three biggest players in the online poker industry — PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker — is that players who had accounts with the sites might never see the money they deposited into them, or whatever winnings they may have accumulated. Naturally, the sites are saying that all is good and people will get their money eventually — which is sort of like your drug dealer insisting you’ll get the money you gave him in advance for a re-up after he’s been charged with felony distribution — but CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell is convinced otherwise.
When asked by a Twitter user if he thinks that online poker players’ money is safe, Rovell said flatly , “No. Count it as lost…I don’t care what the poker sites are saying, I don’t think online poker players can COUNT ON getting all their $ back.”
Additionally, Rovell did a Q&A with poker agent Brian Balsbaugh, and the outlook for the online gambling industry he painted is a grim one.
“It was a complete shock,” Balsbaugh told Rovell. “It happened, it happened fast and it completely annihilated what was a flourishing industry in the United States.” He added, “online poker in the United States at this time is completely wiped out.”
But the crackdown’s economic implications don’t end there. The three poker sites in question spend millions annually advertising on various male-centric TV shows and sporting events, putting the squeeze on a bunch of people completely out of the blue. The future of the increasingly popular World Series of Poker — an event fueled heavily by advertising revenue from online poker sites — also suddenly looks murky.
Logically, you have to wonder what will become of online sportsbooks? Do the Feds have sites like Bodog and Sportsbook in their crosshairs as well? Those sites are basically doing the same thing the poker sites were doing — using fraudulent methods to trick payment processors like Visa and MasterCard into processing payments in order to circumvent the 2006 law that made online gambling illegal in the U.S. Case in point — the last time I deposited money into an online sportsbook account, it registered on my Visa statement that I was paying for services at a spa.
And the money they’re making is huge. ESPN.com gambling expert Chad Millman told me a few months ago that online sportsbooks handle “significantly more” money than legal Vegas sportsbook do, figures “in the high hundreds of millions of dollars.” So can’t you just see some young, ambitious federal prosecutor licking his chops to make a career off of taking those guys down?
Thank goodness that the Obama Justice Department is out there cracking down on America’s real problem: people who like to kill time spending a few of their hard-earned bucks gambling online every now and then. God forbid they focus their energies going after the real financial criminals in this country — the modern day robber barons at Goldman Sachs, AIG, Lehmann Brothers, etc — who fleeced us all and brought the richest country in the world to its knees in the process, all so some as$hole Wall Street nutsacks could buy nice summer cribs in the Hamptons to pass out in after they’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars spraying their various “friends” with Cristal at Lily Pond or whatever other gag-inducing club Hamptons people are doing that sort of thing in these days.
And here’s hoping that once they finish that job, the Feds will then turn their attention to the real problem: Internet porn. Because imagine how much more productive this country would be if we weren’t all spanking it to Youjizz all day long! This is what’s called Winning the Future, folks. Can you feel it?!