It seems like just yesterday that the poker world was laughing at Sheldon Adelson’s pathetic attempts to stop the spread of legal online poker in the United States. Adelson’s key argument has remained that internet poker will become a “cancer” and create addiction wherever it’s allowed. And the key rebuttal to this argument has been this: you own the world’s largest land-based casino corporation and have made billions off of gamblers everywhere!
But Adelson may not look like as big of a joke now that fellow casino magnate Steve Wynn has joined the dark side. Wynn, who says that Adelson gave him some lessons about the lucrative Macau market, also agrees with the Las Vegas Sands chairman’s view on online gaming too.
“I end up agreeing with Sheldon,” Wynn told Nevada journalist Jon Ralston. He continued to tell Ralston that one of his biggest problems with online gaming is the government’s “insatiable appetite for revenue.” He added, “This is not a good entrepreneurial opportunity Where is the business opportunity? The big problem I see is I don’t see the government letting us keep the money”
Unlike Adelson, Wynn is at least honest about what drives him in this debate: money. However, he also took some time to jump on Adelson’s bandwagon with regard to underage online gambling. He said that teenagers going online and blowing lots of money could cause a scandal big enough to hamper the entire gaming industry. We’ve heard this argument plenty of times from Adelson, and it’s always been put down the same way: neither Nevada nor New Jersey have had one reported incident of an underage online poker player yet.
One more tired argument that Wynn trotted out was the idea that Las Vegas’ economy could take a big hit from online gaming. He told Ralston how he and Adelson have used some of their massive Macau profits to refurbish properties in Vegas and hire new employees. But Wynn alleges that we’re supposed to believe internet gaming would make it non-profitable to operate casinos in Sin City. The common counterargument to this is that many online gamblers rarely visit land-based casinos and poker rooms, so this isn’t a case of the internet cannibalizing brick-and-mortar casino markets.
Once again, many of Adelson’s previous points have been easily put down or dismissed. But with Wynn now joining his fight and backing the same arguments, the anti-online poker movement has to be taken a little more seriously. After all, these two guys are worth almost $30 billion together. So they’ve got lots of money to throw at their cause.