National regulations for a borderless industry: US versus UK approaches to online gambling

Abstract

Abstract The digital revolution is a key enabling factor for globalisation. New borderless industries like online gambling are said to be the beneficiaries of it. States are not. Online gambling providers have located their operations in territories that license their operations and the industry has developed self-regulatory codes of practice, while two of the industry's largest markets have taken dramatically opposing regulatory approaches: the US has sought to prohibit online gambling, while the UK has regulated and actively encouraged it. We find that US prohibition of online gambling is largely the result of a historically nationally segmented market and regulatory structure that has been lacking in the UK. Rather than the global medium affecting the nature of the regulatory approaches, we demonstrate that the intersection of private market interests with the national public regulatory context is the reason why the UK has formally adopted many of the self-regulatory tools developed by the online gambling industry, effectively legitimising the industry's own framework for self-regulation, while the US has chosen not to do so.