Sheldon Adelson brings up anti online gambling during Las Vegas' 2014 G2E

This year’s G2E Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas has been noticeable. What many did not see coming, others did and were only waiting for any chance for the Anti Online Gambling groups to come out against the industry. One of the main figures in this story is casino mogul Sheldon Adelson who has become the leading role in the online gambling war, although he is pretty well known from his Anti Obama campaigns as well as the unconditional support to Israel’s conflict. Sheldon Adelson, CEO and chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corp, has been fighting the online gambling industry as the casino mogul considers that games must be played in person: “You cannot know your customer on the Internet”. Of course that this is just another of his excuses to justify the fact that, once the online gambling market gets federally regulated, characters like Sheldon Adelson will have to start sharing the cake, one of the worst scenarios for casinos’ greedy entrepreneurs like Adelson. Still, Adelson continues opposing any online gambling regulated either by the states or federally all over the country.

If the US administration came up with a federal legislation for the online gambling industry, Adelson’s brick and mortar casino’s empire would have to compete in a global and equal market, something that would finally break Adelson’s monopoly as no online operator will ever join a company that represents and backs up any anti online gambling market. As Sheldon Adelson has stated a few times (maybe too often to be true), his major issues with gambling comes from family matters; his father, a gambler from the old time, someone who never had a chance to get professional help to quit gambling, seems to haunt Sheldon’s memories when it comes to federally regulating the online gambling industry in the US, but it seems that that ghost has not ever come out to prevent Adelson from joining the gambling industry.

But as the press states, hypocrisy is the only instrument that Sheldon has as, money has not helped him much in his past campaigns. And that is why he had to put a show during the 2014 Global Gaming Expo that was held at the Las Vegas Sands. First, the casino mogul starting attacking the online gambling industry, bringing up the addiction matters (something that can easily happen in any of his brick and mortar casinos) and the security access measures to prevent underage players. Both press and online operators, as well as many brick and mortar casinos, seem to have enough of this character and his lack of knowledge as the online gambling industry has better tools to prevent these issues than the brick and mortar casinos.