Peak Entertainment, an Internet casino operators and provider of online gaming software, is taking a proactive approach toward regulating online gaming in the United States.
Last week the company's business development manager, Alex Roberts, sent a lengthy letter to the office of Michigan Governor Jennifer M. Granholm, encouraging her office to study the feasibility of regulating the industry instead of prohibiting it.
IGN obtained a copy of the letter, which was sent on behalf of Peak Entertainment, but company officials had no further comments, saying the letter "speaks for itself."
The governor's office wasn't keen to discuss the letter either, as numerous calls from IGN went unreturned.
The letter stresses that state governments can use I-gaming revenue to help relieve current budget crises.
Roberts also touches on developments in Nevada, where the state legislature passed enabling legislation to regulate the industry. He encourages the governor explore making Michigan a leader in regulating online casinos in the United States.
With the state already having a gaming control board in place, Roberts feels adopting I-gaming would be a smooth transition.
Based in Willemstad, Curacao, Peak Entertainment, NV owns and operates five online casino properties and a player-to-player poker room under multiple gaming licenses from the government of Curacao.
According to the company's Web site, its casinos serve more than 250,000 online customers worldwide and have paid out more than $3 billion to their players' accounts since being officially licensed and open to the public in August 1997.
It is with that kind of market demand that Roberts feels Michigan could leverage in taxing a legal gaming industry. He cites the more than $91 million in tax revenues the state collected from three Detroit area land-based casinos as just a fraction of what could be obtained from online casinos if they were taxed and regulated in the state.
Roberts also used a common argument from those who favor regulating online gaming--that the state already has a heavy influence of gambling, with a state lottery and land-based casinos in place.
The goal of the letter is clear: Peak wants to be the first to get a license in Michigan to operate an online casino.
That aspiration seems unlikely, though, at least in the immediate future. Michigan hasn't yet considered legislation aimed at regulating online gambling, nor has there been a groundswell of support fro the idea from the state.
Michigan is one of six U.S. states with a law prohibiting Internet gambling already in place. Experts have pointed out, however, that the law, passed in 1999, actually opens the door of I-gaming. As pointed out by gaming professor I. Nelson Rose, the law "prohibits the use of the Internet to commit or attempt a list of specified crimes, defined purely by references to existing statutes," but does not explicitly ban I-gaming. In his article "Michigan Legalizes Online Gambling?" Rose states that the law allows Michigan-licensed operators to offer online gambling services provided they are expressly authorized by the legislature to do so.
Click here to view Roberts' letter to Gov. Granholm.