Sheldon Adelson Receives a Fine
If you’re a frequent visitor to this site, you’ve no doubt read my articles about Sheldon Adelson. He’s a very rich, very powerful old man that has made it his personal mission to stop the legalization and regulation of online gambling. He thinks that, due to sites offering promotions such as a no deposit bonus, online gambling will damage land-based casinos.
His other complaint is that websites can’t prevent children from logging on and betting, despite no recent record of any such event taking place. Sites today have plenty of safeguards in place to prevent this from happening. You know what could use better security, though? Land-based casinos, specifically Sheldon Adelson’s Bethlehem Sands Casino in Pennsylvania.
Earlier this month, at the Bethlehem Sands Casino in Pennsylvania, it was discovered that minors were gambling on the casino floor. It’s a humorous event, especially since it’s the very thing that Adelson is trying to prevent from happening with online gambling.
It’s not the first time, either. This is the fifth penalty that the casino has received in the last five years. This fine, which was $85,000, encompasses six incidents where minors were able to gamble before being discovered.
These six instances, which occurred between June 2013 and January 2014, involved gamblers between the ages of 17 and 19. In the latter incident, the 19 year old was also drinking alcohol, which the casino will likely get fined for as well.
The combined total of these five penalties is well over a quarter of a million dollars. There were six incidents in 2010, four instances in 2012, and ten instances in 2013. Despite the large fee, it’s still likely chump change to a casino that has already paid nearly a billion dollars in taxes since first opening its doors six years ago.
These fines are likely causing Adelson’s efforts to stop online gambling to lose ground in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania has been toying with the idea of legalizing online gambling for a while, and this fine will only further support the idea. There are multiple safeguards in place to prevent underage gamblers from gambling online. There’s also multiple forms of payment available to those that want to gamble online. If anything, gambling online is becoming infinitely more safer than gambling in person.
The march to legalize online gambling in Pennsylvania moves forward, and a state legislator has promised to introduce an online poker bill in the very near future. Should it get the support it needs, Sheldon Adelson may have only himself to blame.
If online gambling becomes legalized in Pennsylvania, then all eyes would turn to California, where online gambling could dramatically increase the state’s revenue. With a current population of more than 38 million people, the legalization of online gambling in California would be seen as a major step in the quest to legalize online gambling nationwide.