Las Vegas Sands has decided to join Cantor Gaming to build an online gaming service offering brands such as The Venetian and Sands. The site will offer the most popular casino games, including blackjack, roulette, baccarat, video poker, slots and online poker. The offering will be part of a full end-to-end gaming service, including customer age and location verification, online payment processing, and customer services. It will not accept US customers and is expected to be operational from the middle of next year.

"This is another opportunity for our company to create greater awareness of our global brands and further establish our presence and interest in the UK market," said Bill Weidner, president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands Corp. "Additionally, as the internet gaming landscape continues to evolve this effort will put us in a strong position to evaluate and react to other potential opportunities."

The Unites States may have chosen the prohibition route concerning online gaming but other countries, such as the UK, have taken a more pragmatic approach and have decided to regulate the activity in order to protect the integrity of play and hopefully reap tax benefits. The Spanish Government has now decided to join the ranks of regulating jurisdictions. When Italy made a similar move recently, they were rewarded with plenty of applications for licences, including from industry heavyweights like Ladbrokes.

Madrid’s regional government has already decided to allow online and telephone betting. Spain will offer 5-year renewable licences and hopes to achieve an economic boost similar to the one expected in Italy since it offered 17,000 private sector licences. The move by Las Vegas Sands shows that American gaming companies are not convinced that the online ban for Americans will be permanent. Terry Lanni, CEO of MGM Mirage, has called for an online gaming review, saying that regulation should be the way forward.

From the early highs of listings and spectacular earnings for online gaming companies to the recent lows when it seemed that the US move to ban the activity would cause the imminent demise of the industry, online operators are now regrouping, reorganising and relaunching themselves in the European markets and beyond. Should online gaming prohibition eventually go the way of alcohol prohibition in the US, Las Vegas Sands will be well placed to come out ahead in the subsequent race to offer the service to Americans. (E-12.06.06)

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