Recently, it was announced that Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson will launch the Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling next year. Despite three states specifically allowing internet gambling and online poker, Adelson will reportedly invest tens of millions of dollars to amend the Wire Act and drive all forms of internet gambling in the United States into the toilet.

Fighting for the legalization and regulation of online poker is the Poker Players Alliance, whose Executive Director, John Pappas (pictured), talked with PocketFives about his reaction to Adelson’s campaign.

PocketFives: Tell us what your reaction was to Sheldon Adelson’s Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling.

John Pappas: If anyone thought the fight for internet poker was going to be easy, they’re going to have to think again. Sheldon is going to put resources and manpower behind his worldview, which is that we should prohibit internet gambling. He wants to turn back the clock on the progress we’ve made at the Federal and state levels over the years.

We’ve seen Sheldon release information about his thoughts over the last few months. What’s surprising is the level to which he is taking it. Some of the arguments he is using are retreads of old arguments that don’t hold water. While people close to this debate know what he’s saying doesn’t make sense, the problem is that the vast majority of Americans could be persuaded by a $10 million ad campaign saying how evil internet gambling is. That’s going to be a challenge for our industry.

Sheldon is on an island, though. No other casinos support his position. No tribes I’m aware of support his position. No lotteries or state regulators support his position. If he can reach that mass of Americans who don’t think or care about internet poker, though, he might have some success.

PocketFives: How can the PPA and our industry persuade the general public not to adopt Adelson’s beliefs?

John Pappas: We first need to expose a lot of the hypocrisy in his campaign, the first of which is that Sheldon (pictured) himself has been interested in i-gaming. Even today at his Venetian casino, they proudly talk about individuals betting or wagering in their sports book using their tablets and smart phones. Here he is claiming all the evils of i-gaming, but at his properties, he is allowing it to happen.

You don’t even have to dig deep to realize he is a billionaire because he runs a casino. All of the arguments he is making about why we should ban internet gambling are the same arguments made years ago as to why we shouldn’t allow brick and mortar casinos to be built.

The reality is the controls are much greater in an online casino than in one of his brick and mortar casinos. Every single wager and every single minute spent in an online casino are tracked in real-time and available to operators and regulators to ensure players aren’t operating in a way that’s detrimental to themselves and not doing anything nefarious like money laundering.

PocketFives: Will the PPA call for a formal boycott of Las Vegas Sands properties?

John Pappas: There will likely be a coming-together of rival interests to see how we can combat Sheldon’s Coalition. That needs to happen. In terms of a sponsored boycott, I don’t think that’s the path we’ll go down because I don’t know how effective it would be. We need to be more strategic. Surely, I encourage players to shop with their feet. Make decisions on whether you think it’s worth playing in his casinos.

PocketFives: Talk about the other individuals reportedly involved in Adelson’s campaign like former Denver mayor Wellington Webb(D), former U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and former New York Governor George Pataki (R, pictured).

John Pappas: They’re hired guns. They are going to do Sheldon’s bidding because they’re getting paid to do so. None of them, to my knowledge, have a history of being anti-gambling. In fact, Pataki expanded off-track-betting in New York to allow people to wager from their cell phones. It seems ironic that he’d take up the cause to ban internet gaming.

PocketFives: Will the PPA team up with the American Gaming Association on this?

John Pappas: Universally, we’re hearing from not only the AGA, but also from their member companies like Caesars and MGM who don’t agree with Sheldon. They’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to educate him on why a regulated market is a preferred approach. They’ve not been able to successfully convince him of that yet. They intend to work with us and work within each other to combat this effort.

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