State of the online sportsbook industry |
Over the last few months, offshore gaming has seen unprecedented changes that it has never experienced before in the history of the industry. These changes have negatively affected sites that mainly cater to US citizens.
This is the reason players should read this article in its entirety before depositing again to a sportsbook taking US players or play at your own peril.
Please note that it is not illegal for US citizens in most states to gamble online, but check your local state laws to make sure.
On May 23rd 2011, the department of justice seized the domain names of the some of the biggest online gaming sites in the world including Bookmaker, Betdsi, Beted and Absolute Poker. The reason for this was because these gaming companies were taking deposits from US citizens via credit cards which is not legal.
The US government set up an elaborate plan which included a fake credit card processing company and got these sites to process with them. Once they had enough evidence, they issued indictments against everyone in those companies who had signed the contracts to process. That day has now become known as “Black Monday” in the industry.
Not only were the domain names taken away but also bank accounts that had thousands of dollars for those companies were seized. Beted had to shut down claiming most of their funds were in those accounts so they couldn’t continue to be in business and in the process stiffing hundreds of players. The poker sites stopped shifted their business away from the US and are still servicing markets in Europe and Asia.
However, Bookmaker and Betdsi are still open for business changing from .com to currently .eu and are also still currently servicing US players. Those sites can be reached at www.bookmaker.eu or www.2betdsi.eu.
The additional backlash from “Black Monday” resulted in some sportsbooks that were not involved in the indictments closing down or stopped taking players from the US notably The Greek, Betus and Sportsbook.com.
The remaining US facing sports betting operations face a tough task since the US government and the banks have clamped down on players sending money by credit card.
This is the reason a player from the United States should be very careful when choosing an online sportsbook. If another Black Monday happens only a few sportsbooks would be able to withstand it. The rest would just fold like Beted did leaving you with out a cent and no where to turn.
The sportsbooks listed below are the only ones we recommend for players from the US. Bookmaker and Betdsi have already proven they can survive a big hit and continue with business as usual. The others are only Totalbets and Betanysports.
What we love about Totalbets.com is they only accept Person to Person transactions. This way they have no problems with bank accounts getting seized by accepting credit cards. They also eliminate the possibility of unscrupulous players depositing and making charge backs thus denting their bottom line. So you send cash and when you win, they pay you in cash also in 48 hours maximum.
So in summary, we urge you to be very careful sending your money with sportsbooks that take US players and strongly recommend playing at the ones we have listed in this article.
