‘Runner, Runner’ Film Paints Online Poker in Bad Light Claim Vegas Bigwigs (Video)

Before he is set to start filming the latest “Batman” installment, Ben Affleck will appear on the big screen in a movie about online poker, “Runner, Runner”.

Filmed mostly in Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island US Commonwealth that does not permit Web poker establishments, “Runner, Runner” portrays the online gambling sector in a very bad light, at least when we consider the trailer (Afleck’s character appears to feed someone to a crocodile).   Gambling911.com has been covering the sector since 1999 and, to the best of our knowledge, nobody has ever been fed to a crock.

Some industry luminaries already fear the film will discourage folks from gambling online. 

"People very well could get the wrong idea," said John Pappas, executive director of the Poker Players Alliance. "Not all offshore operators are unregulated bad guys. This is a dramatization, lets be clear about that. It shows what could be happening in a worst-case scenario."

In fact, not a single person from the sector acted as a consultant for the film.

Industry groups like the American Gaming Association are preparing advertising and discussion screenings around the film's release, to draw a distinction between its own vision of what regulated online gambling will be like in the States versus what it perceives to be the “seedy trappings of global online poker”.

AGA President Geoff Freeman, in an email sent to its board last week obtained by Reuters, plans to argue that the film underscores the risk of a poorly-regulated market.

Hollywood has a way of glamorizing everything up to and including vampires. This is a movie that highlights a part of the Internet that has real downside unless governments act," said MGM spokesman Alan Feldman.

"The specifics of the film are not what we're associating ourselves with," said Joe Versaci, chief marketing officer for Station Casino Inc's Ultimate Gaming, the first company to take online bets in the U.S. in the state of Nevada in April.

"There was a lot of discussion of whether we wanted to be part of 'Runner, Runner,' but we decided we could draw a nice distinction between the illegal, unregulated world and the regulated market we are advocating," said Tariq Shaukat, chief marketing officer for Caesars.

In an ironic twist, “Runner, Runner” star Justin Timberlake is set to walk the red carpet for the film’s October 4 premiere in – where else – Las Vegas. 

- Nagesh Rath, Gambling911.com