American Gambling Association Drops Regulation Support

May 24, 2014 by

american-gambling-associationThe American Gaming Association, also known as the AGA for short, has normally been a strong ally in the fight to get gambling regulated on a federal level in the United States. But that has changed after a recent announcement from CEO Geoff Freeman. He mentioned that the live casino industry is particularly divided on the issue, so the AGA cannot be a leading proponent of it. With that having been said, they will not be opposing it either. Instead, they’re taking a neutral approach and letting the metaphorical chips fall where they may.

Behind This American Gaming Association Move

This move isn’t something that Freeman was particularly happy with. He was quoting with saying, “One of the things I’ve learned in this industry is we are extraordinarily competent at shooting at one another.” He’s been president for a little over a year now, and he’s finding that the online gambling world can be strange at times. Inside of the past year, the AGA started supporting online gambling legislation on the federal level, so having them withdraw support is particularly interesting in terms of the timing of the issue and the fact that it looks like they’re flip-flopping back and forth.

The Power of the AGA

One of the main problems that this will cause is the lack of lobbying. The AGA is the largest lobbying group in the nation for gambling, and having them behind online gambling was a pretty big deal. Without them supporting the efforts, the uphill battle has continued to get even harder.

It’s looking like more and more that players are just going to have to wait for states to open up to gambling on an individual basis. This seems to be what’s working so far as state governments tend to be more open to regulating games on the state level. After seeing the success of states like New Jersey, it will be interesting to see how many more states get the ball rolling inside of the next 12 months.

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