Making Deals -- Online gaming company IChance International Inc. said today that it is purchasing all of the outstanding shares of Worldwide Management SA, a Costa Rican company that sublicenses Internet gambling software. The acquisition is effective Jan. 20.
From Down Under -- The Australian Financial Review reported today that Rep. James Leach's efforts to ban online gambling in the United States have an effect in Australia. Australian gaming sites draw a large portion of their customers from the United States and cannot accept bets from their countrymen. Much like the United States government, the Australian government is examining ways to make it illegal for credit cards to be used for online gaming.
Tidbit from South America -- The leader of Costa Rica's National Association of Public and Private Employees, Albino Vargas, recently told the Agence-France Presse that the influx of online gambling companies doing business in Costa Rica has "taken the country by surprise." "We Costa Ricans are unaware of the extent to which we are becoming a sort of tax haven for all kind of legal and illegal business without the state taking due of what is going on," he said. Vargas said Costa Rica may have opened itself to being home to money laundering schemes by hosting online gaming companies, which are not allowed to set up shop in places like the United States. "Political parties have fallen short, have been irresponsible, naive and looked the other way," he told the international news service.
UK Bit -- On Wednesday, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Tessa Jowell warned that betting shops are contributing to problem gambling by offering to make virtual betting machines with high jackpots. "We take the view that the uncontrolled proliferation of high-prize machine gaming on the high street risks seriously increasing problem gaming," she said. Jowell said she plans to introduce legislation that would curb the increase in jackpot amounts.
Quote Worthy -- "State and local politicians seem to be overstepping their boundaries. How can the state attempt to regulate businesses that are based in foreign countires? What right does the state have to regulate the Internet -- considered a technological frontier by many. What adult needs a politician to regulate what they do in their spare time? ... The only area where politicians have any argument to pass legislation regarding Internet gambling is with kids." -- from an editorial in the Examiner, a newspaper covering the New Jersey towns of Millstone, Upper Freehold, Roosevelt and Allentown.