Well, political “morality” crusading is for the moment trumping economics in North Carolina …
In Asia, things are even crazier than the U.S., I think. Macau is being described as the world’s hottest casino market — outperforming even Las Vegas — but the irony is that Macau is technically a part of China, which is the strictest major nation in terms of cracking down on Internet gambling. I wrote an article about this today and wrote about Macau’s gambling economy a few months ago, too.
I’ve been in Southeast Asia recently and it’s a mish-mash — some countries openly allow online gambling (like Thailand) but many others like Myanmar and Vietnam absolutely don’t. Vietnam doesn’t even allow Facebook. And even Thailand has been cracking down on online betting during the World Cup, although that’s kind of a different story.