Superbowl Online Betting
Still At High Levels
Cybersecurity vendor notes that during
the runup to the Super Bowl, Americans are still visitng gambling
sites despite the new law
IDG News Service in the States reported this week that the law prohibiting
U.S. financial institutions from processing payments to online gambling
sites hasn't stopped U.S. employees from visiting sports betting
sites, according to cybersecurity vendor ScanSafe.
Attempted visits to online sports gambling Web sites by employees
of ScanSafe's U.S. customers were up 77 percent in the week between
January 23 and 31, IDG reported. The Super Bowl, the National Football
League's championship game, is this Sunday.
ScanSafe provides a Web-blocking service to large businesses, and
it examines 6 billion Web requests a month.
In October, President George Bush signed into law a measure prohibiting
financial institutions from processing payments to gambling sites.
The government has until mid-July to develop the processing regulations
for financial institutions.
But some online gambling sites have begun telling U.S. customers
that financial institutions are already distancing themselves. On
Wednesday, PokerRoom.com told U.S. customers to cash out.
"The remaining companies that process cashouts from PokerRoom.com
to our players in the United States have contacted us to say that
in the near future they will no longer facilitate these transactions,"
said a message on PokerRoom's home page. "As such, we would
advise all American players who have not cashed out already to do
so immediately."
The gambling provision, amended by Congress onto a ports security
bill in late September, has had no impact on the number of people
visiting gambling Web sites, said Dan Nadir, vice president for
product strategy at ScanSafe. ScanSafe doesn't track whether those
people completed bets, he said.
"We suspected [the law] wouldn't have much of an impact,"
Nadir said. Some gambling sites will develop alternative payment
mechanisms, he said.
ScanSafe didn't provide the raw numbers of visits to gambling sites
this past week, but gambling represented about 3.4 percent of the
content it blocked for clients in 2006. By comparison, 15.1 percent
of the blocked content was chat or instant messaging, 14.6 percent
was advertising, 7.2 percent was Web mail, and 3.9 percent was pornography.
Visits to sports betting sites such as Bodog.com were common this
past week, Nadir said. About 53 percent of the U.S. visits to gambling
sites ScanSafe observed this past week were to sports betting sites
as opposed to casino or lottery sites. Bodog didn't immediately
respond to an e-mail asking if its business has been hurt by the
U.S. law.
About 84 percent of ScanSafe's customers blocked employee access
to gambling sites. Companies block employees from gambling sites
for a couple of reasons: because they don't trust that gambling
sites are safe, and because they don't want employees playing games
on company time, Nadir said.
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