I received the Esquire magazine courtesy of Bodog. The insert was quite impressive and I actually learned a tip or two about playing poker.
They dont seem to go after online poker rooms
Actually this post shows that the DOJ is going after Esquire for taking money to run an insert for Bodog’s poker room, so it would seem they are going after online poker rooms.
Overall, this is a chilling set of circumstances. It isn’t really anything new though, just the latest in the DOJ’s assertion that advertisers are potentially aiding and abeting illegal activities. Of course, this has not been proven in a court of law, and the DOJ probably doesn’t want it to go that far since their position isn’t exactly rock solid…the wire act being the key to their arguement; which is specific to placing a phone call to make a bet on sports…that hardly extends to a computer that is connected to a server in another country where a US citizen happens to be playing online poker. Phone lines and internet connections are two distinct things, for proof of that just look at the growth of the VOIP industry (Vonage for example).
For the DOJ to win a case like this (let’s say against Esquire magazine), they would first have to prove that Bodog was doing something illegal. Since online poker isn’t explicitly illegal in the US, and because they are located in Costa Rica, this becomes a very difficult a thing to do. Then they would have to prove that Esquire knew that Bodog was doing something illegal, which is a very shaky assertion. Esquire doesn’t have access to Bodog’s player database, so how can they know anything about who is playing at Bodog? Both these things would have to happen in a court of law for Esquire to really be in trouble. But, the weight of a subpeona from the DOJ will scare just about anyone in the US. It is probably in Esquires best interest to skip the extra $1 million in revenue from Bodog than to pay for a potential legal battle with the government.
So what does this mean for affiliates like us. We are in the same position as Esquire, we advertise for online casinos and poker rooms, but we have no idea where our players are coming from, US or otherwise. If someone clicks to one of our sites from Google, that person could just as easily be in Moroco as the US. Most affiliate stats don’t provide that level of detail, which personally I wouldn’t want anyway because of the DOJ situation. And, we are much smaller fish than an Esquire or Clear Channel, so we would likely never see a letter from the DOJ.
Hopefully the tide will turn in our favor. Frankly, with the exploading popularity of poker in the US and around the world, the acceptance of online gambling in the UK and several other countries, and the hypocrisy of the US stance on gambling in general, that this could one day blow over altogether. At least all of us here hope so.