Steve Wynn Says He's Still Against I-PokerCasino Mogul Still Not Interested In Online Gaming |
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In an interview on Nevada political program “Ralston Reports”, billionaire casino owner Steve Wynn touched on a number of topics concerning the U.S. gaming industry and said that he is still against real-money casino games on the Internet.
“I believe that Internet gaming is not going to happen in any way that is meaningful for Las Vegas,” Wynn said. The 73-year-old said he still agrees with fellow casino owner Sheldon Adelson. The latter is trying to push an online gaming ban through Congress, but the proposal is flirting with numerous carve-outs for some forms of online gambling.
Peer-to-peer online poker is one of the activities that doesn’t appear to be in the position to receive a carve-out, though existing online poker industries in the United States that came to fruition before a federal bill could conceivably get a carve-out.
California and Pennsylvania are currently mulling over legislation to establish their own regulated online poker markets, despite the threat on Capitol Hill.
If a federal bill pertaining to online gaming passes, state lotteries would likely get an exemption and be allowed to continue with their Internet offerings and possibly expand them in the future.
Wynn addressed the topic of federal online gaming legislation.
“I don’t think it has any chance of getting through the House of Representatives, and even if it did, it would at the behest, at the encouragement, of the state lottery boards who want to go into that business. I am not going to get into [online gaming]. We’ll get blamed if anything goes wrong.”
Other casino operators, like MGM and Caesars, who support web gaming, have not been blamed because nothing has gone “wrong” in Nevada, New Jersey or Delaware.
Wynn and Adelson’s position is actually about the same as retiring Congressman Harry Reid (D-NV), who recently said that “online gaming is not the direction [Nevada] should go.”
Watch Wynn’s full interview:
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