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Saturday, January 12, 2008 mgowanbo.cc
Survey group was a thousand strong
Followingon from our news earlier today, furtherdetails of the UCLV study are now in the public domain and can bereported.
The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that over 96percent of the 1 000 respondents in the survey told the UNLV'sInternational Gaming Institute team conducting the study of Internetgambling in Nevada that they were not really interested in onlinegambling .
But those Nevadans who do gamble over the Internet -3.7 percent of the sample - mostly play poker or wagered on sports, arepredominately male, and are not completely comfortable with theintegrity of online gaming. Nevadan online gamblers said that theirInternet gambling activity does not affect their gambling habits insideNevada [land] casinos.
Institute director Bo Bernhard told theNevada Gaming Control Board last week that respondents were surveyed inJanuary 2007. Follow-up in-depth interviews were conducted throughoutthe year with 27 of the respondents, including 18 active onlinegamblers.
2007 was a turbulent year for online gambling;several company executives were detained, anti-online gamblingpolitical and legislative activity increased in Washington DC and theNeteller saga dragged on.
"It became clear that eventscontemporaneous with our work may have chilling effects on the patternsof online play," Bernhard is quoted as telling the Board. "Thisresearch was conducted during an interesting point in time."
TheLVRJ reports that Control Board Chairman Dennis Neilander said thepanel wanted a better understanding of the online gaming activities ofNevada residents. Several technology companies and other parties haveexpressed interest over the years in potentially setting up onlinegambling sites in Nevada that would cater only to Nevada residents. Theconcept would require action by the Nevada Legislature.
Neilander and fellow board members questioned if Nevadans were in fact gambling on the Internet.
"Anecdotally,we were told the activity was going on," Neilander said. "That led to apolicy question; if this is something that is going on, isn't thissomething we ought to regulate and tax? We felt you really can't makedecisions without appropriate research."
Neilander said it isnot illegal to gamble on the Internet, but it is a violation of federallaw to operate a gambling site that accepts wagers from Americans.
LastFriday, the Institute presented its findings to a special joint meetingof the Gaming Control Board and Nevada Gaming Commission, which wouldwrite any policy regarding Internet gaming by Nevada residents.
Bernhard,who oversaw the yearlong study with assistant director Tony Lucas,cautioned regulators that respondents are not always forthcoming whenbeing questioned about what he termed "deviant behavior." The number ofNevadans gambling online may actually be higher because respondentscould have been reluctant to admit to a questionably legal activity.
Nevertheless,the number of Nevada respondents saying they had gambled online wasstatistically similar to the number of national respondents whoparticipated in a 2006 online gaming survey conducted by theWashington, D.C.-based American Gaming Association.
Bernhardsaid those respondents that had gambled online liked the activity's lowcost. Others use online gambling as a way to teach themselves aboutdifferent games of chance. The survey also found that nearly nine outof 10 Nevadans who had not gambled online said they were "not at alllikely" to participate in online gambling if the state licensed andregulated the activity.
Current online gamblers, Bo Bernhardsaid, had strong concerns about the legal status and the unregulatednature of the activity and would have more of a comfort level if Nevadaregulated online gambling.
Control Board member Mark Claytonsaid that because the study's findings showed such a small number ofgamblers wagering online, he didn't believe Nevada casino operatorswould undertake the effort toward setting up Internet gaming siteswithin Nevada borders for Nevada residents.
Bo Bernhard said the survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.2 percentage points because of the large sampling. |
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发表于 2008-1-14 01:14
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