Online Gambling: Sportsbook.com Customers Among the SafestThey've had to endure long waits for payouts (up to a month as of press time), but thank the US government policy and a mass exodus of payment processors from the online gambling market says a representative for Cake Poker
Cake - which is one of the fastest growing online poker networks with two of the industry's largest Internet gambling firms (Sportsbook.com and BetUS.com) utilizing their services - insists that its client, Sportsbook.com, has positioned itself for long term feasibility in a market place where short term headaches have become the norm.
"Sportsbook.com has prided itself on having the best credit card acceptance rate in the business for online gamblers," said the Cake spokesperson, who took part in this past weekend's CAP Spring Break Bahamas excursion. "The problem is that the US government prohibits payouts via credit cards so Sportsbook.com has had to rely on check processing instead."
But when it comes to Sportsbook.com's volume of payouts, the current climate in check processing for online gambling is limited. Most of the big name processors pulled out of Internet gaming following the apprehension of two Neteller founders last January. Neteller was the largest eProcessor catering to the online gambling community.
"These guys (at Sportsbook.com) are among the most honest guys in the business. They want to make sure everyone gets paid and it is killing them that they have to deal with the current check processing problems."
The problems are nothing more than an inability to keep up with volume and hence, provide customers with the 3 to 5 day lag time they were once used to. Instead, some customers are waiting up to four weeks. Only a few thousand dollars can be withdrawn per check. The important thing though is that Sportsbook.com has set processors and plenty of money in the coffers. Some of the smaller online gambling establishments have been forced to rely on less scrupulous payment processors and could end up burnt in the future. Others simply could not deal with the payment processing burdens and have stopped taking new US customers entirely.
All online gambling firms are at the mercy of their check processors. For Sportsbook.com they are at both an advantage and disadvantage. The advantage being they have the resources in place to handle their massive volume of business. The disadvantage is that, because of Sportsbook.com's incredible volume, the processing cannot always take place as swiftly. Sportsbook.com anticipates having tools in place to handle the tremendous upcoming football betting season that begins in earnest this coming August.
There is plenty of hope on the horizon. A grass roots trade organization with a tremendous amount of support has asked the courts for an injunction into the UIGEA policy development process this past week. A handful of Congressmen and women have also proposed legislation that would make online gambling legalized in the States with a tremendous tax revenue stream.
In the meantime, Sportsbook.com is enjoying a booming business, partially because many of its competitors have not been able to process credit cards with the same type of reliability. Sportsbook.com is the largest online gambling business in terms of customer volume catering to the North American market.
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Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com
Originally published June 8, 2007 11:19 am ET
