Opinion: Billionaire is winning battle against Internet gambling

When Sheldon Adelson’s campaign against online gambling in America emerged last fall, some Internet gambling supporters dismissed his effort as misguided and confused. They pointed to the fact that the entire gambling industry except for Adelson was united in its support of extending gambling to the Internet. Some felt that few would take objections to online gambling on moral grounds seriously from a man who had made a huge fortune off of land-based casinos. Even Adelson’s comment that he was ‘willing to spend whatever it takes,” to stop online gambling was seen by some as a hollow threat given his inability to push his man into the White House by spending tens of millions of dollars.

But half a year later, Adelson appears to be winning his war against online gambling. In the fall of 2013, proponents of online gambling felt the wind at their back with states like New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada launching regulated online gambling and high expectations that big revenues and tax receipts generated in New Jersey would push other states to embrace online gambling. But as of June, online gambling efforts in key states like California appear to be stalled and the best that online gambling supporters can say about the federal level is that Adelson is no closer to implementing a federal online gambling ban than they are to pushing through a federal regulatory regime for online gambling.