Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | August 2010 24 Soccer Betting happens with the so-called Australian model of inter-state online gaming. This was pretty much the proposal made back in 2007 when Jorge Oliveira, who at that time was the Commissioner for Legal Affairs of the Macau Gaming Commission, said an online gaming bill could be in place in two years. Shortly after the impromptu announcement at a gaming industry conference, Las Vegas Sands Corp said it was interested in running online sports books from its properties, in the manner of Las Vegas casino sports book operations. Parallel bookmaking One serious flaw in this plan is that it would be next to impossible to block such legitimate online sports betting sites from mainland Chinese customers. Some enterprising souls would in all likelihood set up proxy or ghost servers with innocuous http addresses to link to the legitimate gambling site even if China’s Internet firewall blocked the official site. Even if credit card issuers within China were able to block payments and settlement involving mainland residents, unauthorised bookmakers in China would still be able to use the prices quoted in the legitimate online product to make their own book, and collect bets by phone free of tax, as allegedly happens now with unlicensed bookies on the mainland using MacauSLOT soccer betting prices. That potential loophole, and the vested commercial interest of Macau’s current online horse racing, soccer and basketball betting monopoly MacauSLOT, majority owned by Dr Stanley Ho’s STDM, is probably why the idea of other online sports betting domiciled in Macau seems to have gone off the agenda. In September last year, Manuel Neves, Director of Macau’s gaming regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ), told Macau Business the legalisation of online gaming “was never a priority”. Times and opinions do of course change. But the main impediments to Macau-based cross border online sports betting seem to be political. Chief among the objections seems to be the possible piggy backing of illegal bookies on the official product and such parallel services then being offered to mainland Chinese customers. So until something changes in the political landscape regarding the way these three jurisdictions—the People’s Republic of China, Macau SAR and Hong Kong SAR— think about cross border online sports betting, expect to see more police raids and enforcement action against unauthorised bookmakers during major international football and other sports tournaments. Crime pays—record receipts for illegal HK bookies during World Cup 2010 Solution—legalise sports books in Macau casinos?