WPT Gambles on Online Market 

WPT Gambles on Online Market

LOS ANGELES – As reported by the LA Times: "American players drive the $2.4-billion online poker market, but the profits they generate flow overseas to the foreign companies that dominate the business.

"Now, Los Angeles-based WPT Enterprises Inc., whose televised World Poker Tour helped touch off the poker craze, wants a piece of that pot — and to get it the company has ventured into uncharted legal territory. From its Wilshire Boulevard offices across from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, WPT has quietly launched an overseas gambling website that it believes will flourish even though the rules of the game are stacked against it.

"WPT bars U.S. citizens, an estimated 80% of its potential customer base, from its Europe-based WPTonline.com poker site. The company has no desire to rile the Justice Department, which considers it illegal to accept online bets from U.S. residents on sports and casino games other than horse racing.

"…So far, the Justice Department has not brought any cases against online poker players or the companies that take their money.

"…Scholars call online gambling law murky, however, because most of the relevant federal statutes, including the 1961 Wire Communications Act, were written long before the Internet era…"