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Take the Grizzlies Plus the Points and, um, Vote for Me!

By Eric Lipman

Every year, in the days leading up to the Super Bowl (that's right, I called it the Super Bowl, what are you gonna do, NFL?), mainstream media outlets run stories on the various and sundry prop (that's gambler lingo for "proposition") bets available to the public. See, for example, this slideshow from Forbes and the accompanying story. As that story notes, only a fraction of the wagers that are placed each year -- from the ho-hum "Which team is going to win the game?" to the marginally relevant but nevertheless popular "What color Gatorade will be dumped on the winning coach?" -- are placed in a sports book in Nevada, the only state in which this particular kind of fun is, strictly speaking, legal. The rest of the money at risk, totaling in the billions of dollars, is handled by "online and other forms of underground wagering" operations. The specifics are oft-debated, but it remains the case that online gambling is illegal in the U.S. Or, at least, the acceptance by an online gambling site of any feasible alternative for funding the account of a U.S.-based customer is illegal. Like I said, oft-debated. But, at least one real-life Brandon Lang...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on February 08, 2010 (boomark / email).