Is Online Sports Betting Legal?

Since 2006, the United States finally got what they have been trying many years to do: make online sports gambling illegal for everyone in the United States. Internet gambling was and still is a complex issue. The interstate wire act of 1961 was established to stop sports gambling activities to be completed via the phone. Lots of people were wondering if this act applied to the Internet. Since the act was established in 1961 before Internet was invented, no one really knew if the law was applicable. In addition the act did not clarify to what type of gambling it was meant for. Was it for all types of gambling or was it just for sports betting?

With all of the questions surfacing among this topic there was one certainty. If you own and ran a gambling website you will be pursued by the government until the end of days. That is one thing that they take extremely serious. Obviously, if you take care of the source you take care of the problem. In addition, it's much harder to go after ten million individuals then it is to target several hundred website owners.

There is a big ongoing debate right now regarding sports gambling. Those who are strongly against it believe that it will lead to games being fixed. In reality, it's not likely to happen in professional sports as it would be quite difficult to have players, coaches, referees, and owners all to be involved to fix the outcome of all games. Those that are in favor of sports betting are saying that it's just something people to do for purely entertainment purposes while they watch the game. My personal opinion is that sports gambling will eventually take you for everything you own.

I have known a lot of sports gamblers in my lifetime and they all started out small: $5 here and $10 there. Eventually, they run a bad streak and just lose everything because all they need is just 1 win to get everything back. For example, if you lose 10 times in a row (that does happen), you can lose a lot of money. 1st bet: 100, 2nd bet: 200, 3rd bet 300, 4th bet 600, 5th bet 1,200, 6th bet 2,400, 7th bet 4,800, 8th bet 9,600, 9th bet 19,200, 10th bet 38,400. If you started betting just $100 for the first bet and try to get back to even but you lose 10 times in a row that's a total loss of $76,800. I know what you're thinking. Who in the world does this? People have done it and I have seen it firsthand. Sports betting is very emotional and sometimes you just don't use your head, you bet on emotion.

There have been recent talks about making online gambling legal and then the government can just tax the bettors for their winnings. Honestly, I hope this doesn't happen because I have seen what sports gambling can do to a person. Gambling brings the devil out of people. If it was up to me, I would vote for online gambling to remain illegal in the United States.

Anthony is an avid college football fan and loves to write articles relating to the Oregon Ducks. Visit his latest site about Surround Sound Wireless at http://www.surroundsoundwireless.org

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anthony_Le