Earl A Major Hurricane: Bears Down On Internet Gambling Hub Antigua
Earl is expected to be nearing a Category 3 hurricane by the time it sweeps past the Caribbean island of Antigua some time Early Monday. Antigua is home to a number of online gambling companies, most of which maintain secondary offices in other i-Gaming jurisdictions like Costa Rica. Businesses that could be affected in some ways include Intertops and Bodog.com. Some online casino groups also operate from the island.
Previous storms that have brushed the island over the past 10 years have had little effect on Internet gambling operations such as World Wide Tele Sports and Carib Sports (neither of which still operate from the island). Most i-Gaming businesses now operate via redundancy when it comes to Web servers.
Earl had become a Category 2 storm overnight Sunday, heading into Monday morning. With its expansive eye wall, Antigua's twin island of Barbuda was expected to be grazed by the southern eye wall and 90 mph sustained winds.
Earl should move more to the west-northwest during the early morning hours Monday, likely bringing the core of the storm over or just to the northeast of the islands of Barbuda, St. Barthelemy, Anguilla, and St. Maartin in the northernmost Lesser Antilles Islands tonight and Monday morning.
While the island was not expected to receive a direct hit, Earl was likely to bring winds between 85 mph to 100 mph overnight and into the morning with potentially up to eight inches of rain.
Long range forecasts have Earl moving up near the East Coast of the U.S., though it is still too early to determine whether the storm will make landfall.
Gambling911.com Staff
