UNLAWFUL INTERNET GAMBLING ENFORCEMENT ACT

Submitted by Erik Smith on Tuesday, September 6, 2011 - 16:10

The ”Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006” (”UIGEA”) caused all publicly listed gaming companies to pull out of the US. When the announcement was made that the passing of the UIGEA was now a reality more than seven billion dollars¹ were erased from the London Stock Exchange alone.

Within a few days The UIGEA changed the online poker history radically and it is unlikely that the online gambling business will ever be as lucrative as it was before.

As mentioned in the PokerStars Era section, the UIGEA gave birth to a new era in online poker history. The World’s largest poker room was no longer PartyPoker. Instead a privately owned company with the brand PokerStars took over the prestigious title turning over billions of dollars annually in the following years.

UIGEA did not ban online gambling as such but instead brought about ambiguous and vague prohibitions mainly serving to make money transactions related to gambling illegal in the United States.

1 Lawrence G. Walters, GamblingLawUpdate, Breaking Down the UIGEA, page 1 (page removed)