Bill O’Reilly Shares his Views on Casino Regulation

Bill O’Reilly opened up about his views on online gambling regulations on a recent interview with John Stossel. Bill, who is not in favor of increasing regulations and liberalization for online gambling, argued the number of problem gamblers in the US would increase easily to 30 million from the current number of approximately 9 million if online casino laws loosened. The video, which lasted 4 minutes, featured Bill arguing this point with no basis of information as to why he believes gambling problems would rise, and he didn’t take the time to compare regulations in other countries to see how they would possibly reflect the situation in the US.

To compete against Bill, avid gambler Stossel argued that not all gamblers are irresponsible and that opening online platforms would not necessarily translate into increased gambling. Instead, John argues that casino players would simply switch the platforms in which they experience gambling, and enjoy them from the comfort of their own home and device of choice. Bill of course rejected this and said a whole new world of problems would open up, as anyone even under the age of 18 could abuse the games and drain their bank accounts.

O’Reilly’s comments were uneducated as usual due to this simple fact: to play online casinos, players need to provide proof of ID the individual is over 18 and a valid bank account that matches. Regulated casino brands such as Spin Palace are all clear about this, and they make stern efforts to monitor the players involved, including their legality of playing. Online casinos do not allow players under the age of 18 to participate due to legal reasons.

There is a chance that fishy casinos across the globe may advertise they accept players below the age of 18 but these are far and few in between. The Internet always poses some risk when making deposits and it is up to the player to do their research in finding out these basic laws. Aside from that, the sign-up process takes up to 1-2 weeks for casinos to verify with banks etc. before a player can make a first deposit.

O’Reilly, however, did not do his homework and simply shouted loud into the camera as he typically does with verbatim that wasn’t based in any logic or evidence. Furthermore, he did not bother to make a comparison to other countries such as Canada that openly accept and allow online gambling across all provinces and yet, do not have the excessive gambling issues Bill assumes such countries would be subjected to.

In fact, Canada is recognized as only having 3% of its adult population addicted to gambling while the industry pumps in billions of dollars in revenues, creating thousands of jobs. News anchors and uneducated analysts like to point to all the negative facts about gambling from a few Wikipedia pages and assume they know the subject in depth, which Bill appears to have done in this interview. Little did he know the legalization of a certain activity does not coincide with growing problems as many people in the US are led to believe, and that online gaming can be done in a responsible manner.

We like to believe that O’Reilly is concerned about this issue, but we really think he is just concerned about making noise on the air and defending his own biased opinions that are grounded in uneducated guesses and assumptions. This is insulting to the online gambling world who take their casino action responsibly, and choose to make it a part of their entertainment just like people choose baseball games or movies. People can get addicted to anything including gambling but this does not mean the activity cannot be enjoyed within reason. We hope next time Bill talks about this manner he takes a look at some of the online casino platforms discussing this topic across the web and maybe even try out a game or two to see what all the fuss is about