Many people have questions about the legality of casino online USA legal, but few understand the laws that govern online gambling in this country. Let’s face it, the situation looks rather complicated: it’s not always easy to understand why it’s perfectly legal to gamble on a site that can’t legally operate in the United States.
We’ve created this page to help you better understand the legal situation of casino online top 10 in the US. If you have any specific questions, it’s best if you contact a lawyer or legal expert in your country, but in general, reading our material will help you better understand the overall current situation.
Relevant Laws
We will need to discuss two laws to better understand the current situation regarding online gambling in the United States. The first is the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which was passed in 2006. This law prohibits businesses and financial institutions from processing Internet gambling payments – it was an attempt to block transactions that funded the best casino online from offshore locations. You may have heard of this law in 2011, when state charges shut down two best us online casino, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. However, it’s important to note here that this legislation only targeted gaming businesses and banks, while gambling sites of individuals were not subject to this ban.
Another key law is the Interstate Bank Transfer Act of 1961. This law was designed to criminalize the transfer of bets on sporting events and other contests over state lines, and as such, the law was also often applied to online betting transactions. In 2011, however, the Department of Justice issued a legal opinion stating that the law only applied to sports betting and did not apply to other wireline transactions.
Regulated states
This opinion has been enough for certain states to come forward to regulate online gambling on their own initiative. As of November 2015, there were three states in the United States with some form of regulation of Internet gambling: New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware. For the most part, these are only intrastate markets, meaning that certain sites cater only to adult players physically located in the same place as such sites themselves.
The size and style of operation of these three markets varies. The New Jersey market is the largest, with several regulated sites operated by Atlantic City casinos. Nevada only allows online poker. Delaware allows safe online casino operated by state racinos, but so far this market remains very small. In an effort to help their poker sites, Delaware and Nevada have agreed to share their player pools, thus establishing the first interstate regulated poker network in the United States.
Gray Zone
Most other states in the United States are considered gray markets in the gaming industry. The term is used to refer to territories where online gambling is not explicitly forbidden but there is no regulatory structure within which popular online casino could operate, and the authorities of these territories may behave unfriendly towards offshore sites that accept US players. The reason why most of the U.S. territory is in this category is pretty obvious: players are free to access these sites (as long as the operators agree – many of them choose not to operate in the U.S. market), but the companies themselves may be at risk of prosecution by federal authorities because of the UIGEA.
The main thing to remember is that most US states do not have laws that criminalize online casino sites gaming. If such laws do exist where they do, they target operators, not players, so you can play safely on the sites you like from within the United States.
International Laws
Internationally, things are even more confusing. Laws governing this area vary greatly from country to country, and there are many gray markets and regulated jurisdictions in a wide variety of countries around the world. Some countries regulate gambling at the federal level, others have state or local governments taking the lead, while others use a combined approach.
Even if online gambling is regulated, how it is done can vary greatly from country to country. Some countries, such as Belgium and Sweden, are blatantly strict about licensing this field, allowing only a very limited number of companies to offer gaming services to their citizens. Other countries, such as the UK, allow offshore operators to be licensed, but use “point-of-consumption” taxation to take some advantage of the market’s operation within the country.