Posted on: August 26, 2024, 02:15h.
Last updated on: August 26, 2024, 02:49h.
Offshore casino and sports betting websites that illegally target players in the United States in direct violation of federal and state gaming laws continue to be told by state gaming regulators to cease their operations.
One of the more notable illegal gaming websites that has for years facilitated online gambling for players in states where such gambling isn’t allowed is Bovada. The gaming brand was originally known as Bodog and reportedly made the Saskatchewan-born Calvin Ayre a billionaire.
This month, gaming regulators in Ohio and Louisiana joined a growing list of state gaming agencies that sent Bovada cease-and-desist letters. The Ohio Casino Control Commission and Louisiana Gaming Control Board each delivered warning notices to the online gaming website that operates remotely around the world from its headquarters in Curacao.
Louisiana and Ohio are both home to legal, regulated brick-and-mortar casinos, plus in-person and online sportsbooks. Online casino games, however, remain prohibited.
Bovada Limits Operations
Louisiana and Ohio’s directives to Bovada follow a growing list of legal gaming states that have warned Bovada to stop allowing consumers in their jurisdictions access to its internet slot machines, table games, poker room, and sportsbook. Bovada claims it operates legally through its iGaming license it holds from the Anjouan Gaming Board.
Along with the online gaming concession Bovada possesses from the archipelagic country located off the southeastern coast of Africa, the website is registered with the Anjouan Offshore Finance Authority.
US gaming regulators, gaming industry leaders, and federal government lawmakers say the Anjouan licenses carry no legal weight stateside. Ohio and Louisiana join Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Washington, DC, and West Virginia in ordering Bovada to terminate player accounts registered in those jurisdictions.
On its website, Bovada says it has adhered to all of the cease-and-desist letters, with Louisiana being the lone exception as of this writing. The LGCB wrote the iGaming company in a letter dated August 6.
Bovada says a customer with an account balance in a state where the website suspends its operations should contact customer support to arrange “a cryptocurrency withdrawal.”
Cryptocurrency is the preferred currency on Bovada, as the platform provides players with larger sign-up bonuses and promotional incentives when using Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and other prominent decentralized digital currencies.
Unregulated Gaming
Gambling in the US has expanded considerably in recent years.
Along with numerous new brick-and-mortar commercial casino states, the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision that a federal law that had limited single-game sports betting to Nevada was unconstitutional resulted in nearly 40 states authorizing sports gambling. Legal iGaming has also grown to seven states, and several others continue contemplating whether to allow online slot machines and table games.
In the wake of the legal gaming industry continuing to reach new markets and players, the American Gaming Association, the leading trade group that represents commercial and tribal gaming interests in the nation’s capital and across the country, says the Department of Justice should do more to crack down on illegal offshore gaming.
The federal law enforcement agency maintains that it “takes seriously the issue of illegal online gambling and continues to successfully investigate and prosecute illegal internet gambling.”
