October 13, Anniversary of the UIGEA

I know this is a little late but I had some problems with the website that prevented me from posting it when I wanted to.

Yet another year has passed since President George Bush set pen to paper and put into effect the UIGEA. I remember watching the press conference on one of the 24 hour news channels. Everyone in Gibraltar just stared at the television as cameras flashed and politicians smiled. I don’t know what were expecting or what we were waiting for. Maybe some sort of national emergency would cause President Bush to postpone the signing. Maybe everyone would come to their senses. It’s sort of that fruitless hope one gets when there is absolutely nothing they can do to prevent something from happening.

But nothing happened.

Someone who was on the phone with our tech guys gave the command, “Yep, turn ’em off.” And with that PartyGaming walked away from close to $700 million a year in revenue and billions in market capitalization.

That was four years ago and while it seems everything has changed not much really has changed. A few payment processors have been scared out of the market or arrested. Bills to overturn the UIGEA, delay it, and legalize have started and stalled at various stages. The rich have gotten richer and the poor poorer in the online poker space.

But really, not much has changed. In the beginning people were predicting a quick overturn of the UIGEA and a quick legalization. But as we’ve seen, it’s not that easy. Four years of legal battles, PPA lobbying, strong support from key politicians, and yet we haven’t even come close to any of those predictions.

As we belatedly recognize the anniversary of the passage of the UIGEA let us keep in mind that once something is taken away it’s often not very easy to get it back. Both the online poker sites and the poker players were caught completely blindsided on this one. By the time the industry and the players could mobilize it was already too late.

When times were good, nobody cared. Players may have bought a PPA membership but nobody was vocal and active. Likewise the PPA was sprinkling around chump change for lobbying and doing a lot of preaching to the choir but they had very little influence. The bigger poker sites either didn’t care about whether or not what they were doing was legal because nobody was coming after them or they were spending their influence dollars on trying to get poker legalized.

The players were no better. They couldn’t care if it was legal or not as long as they could still play.

I’m not saying the players, the PPA, and the online poker sites are the only source of blame but they all were lazy about protecting their rights and freedoms. Keep that in mind next time an election is coming up.