Will Nevada Seek Compacts Outside of the US?
It seems that there is more than a little interest coming out of Nevada regarding compacts with regulated Online Poker locations from out side of the US. There has of course been much talk of the lack of liquidity in a stand alone Nevada online poker product, putting it bluntly it is highly likely to fail and fall well short in getting the amount of players, in order to operate a successful online room. Inter state compacts have been seen as the answer to this problem however after a call for opinion last month, the Nevada Gaming Commission has received a detailed reply from the Alderney Gambling Control Commission. The bill as it stands did allow for international partnerships however there is a wording change required and a need for the formulation of regulations and implementation measures so that Governor Brian Sandoval is satisfied, along with a call for interested parties who will handle player disputes. The reply to these and more questions came from Michael Ellen, the Licensing and Strategy Director for the Alderney Gambling Control Commission. He believes that tax should be placed on the location of the wager and not the location of the server and that Nevada should establish a committee to handle player disputes. He put it like this, "In existing best practices outside the United States the Internet casino patron or player will contract with a local or business-to-consumer operator prior to gambling by accepting terms and conditions on the gambling site." He says that the operator should deal with first line disputes, and then by regulation if required, there is an appeal process.
If these are the only things stopping international compacts then there should be no problem, as it all sounds pretty basic stuff. Mr Ellen goes on to say, "If the dispute arises on a network linking several local operators, the business-to-business platform provider can provide input into the gameplay and this will be subject to regulation in the jurisdiction of the platform provider. However, the network provider does not usually have direct contact with the player." Again, pretty (one would hope) easy to arrange and manage and Ellen also made it clear that "The Alderney Gambling Control Commission also requested that Nevada reinstate language in Assembly Bill 114 that would allow it to compact with jurisdictions located outside of the United States, the original provisions of Assembly Bill 114 appeared to allow compacting with jurisdictions outside the United States, these provisions now appear to restrict the ability to compact to only United States states. While we understand there may have been political reasons for the change, we would urge that the law be amended to allow the governor to consider other jurisdictions."