Online gambling has been front page news across the state of Massachusetts in recent months, as legislators and regulators put their heads together and try to figure out how the state can benefit from this fast growing industry.
On Wednesday, The Boston Herald reported that the state Gaming Commission is now actively pushing for Internet gambling, which would make Massachusetts only the fourth state in the U.S. to enter the online gambling arena.
“The time is now, it’s upon us,” Gaming Commission Chairman Stephen Crosby tells the venerable Boston publication. “We can’t wait any longer, even though we’re still in the middle of (casino) licensing.”
State Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg, the architect of the state’s casino law, said he would take his cues from the commission on how best to legislate online gaming. “It’s a new frontier,” Rosenberg said. “I personally don’t see how you avoid it.
“You can’t control the Internet. When people turn on their computer they go where they want to go,” Rosenberg explained. “We’re just at the early stages of trying to understand how this actually works, and given that you can organize businesses inside the commonwealth, within the country, and internationally and set them up online, so we need to figure out how that all works.”
With discussions of online gambling now centered on tax revenue and economic development, all signs suggest that Beantown residents may soon be placing their bets online.
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