by Tom Wailgum

E-Bookies Open the Door for Online Gambling

News
Feb 01, 20031 min
BPM Systems

As NFL fans and the two football finalists geared up for Super Bowl XXXVII on Jan. 26, in San Diego, so too were online gambling sites. It’s a safe bet that a good portion of the Internet gambling industry’s 2003 revenue (about $5 billion) was at stake.

While online gambling is illegal in the United States, a simple Web search yields thousands of gambling sites. A December 2002 GAO report pegs the number of e-gaming websites at 1,800, many based in the Caribbean. These sites constantly update their offerings for the gambling public. One such update is “in-progress betting,” a way for online gamblers to place hundreds of bets during the game, and that’s hundreds more ways for fools and their money to be parted.