SOURCE: Philadelphia Daily News

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Over the last several months, executives from offshore parlors have been arrested while traveling through the U.S. Just this week the London Sunday Times reported that the Justice Department had issued subpoenas to four Wall Street investment banks. The timing, 2 weeks before the Super Bowl, is significant. An estimated $500 million was bet on last year's Super Bowl via the Internet - more than six times the amount bet in Las Vegas. A firm that tracks Internet gambling, Christiansen Capital Advisors, has estimated that online sports betting generates more than $4 billion in revenues annually, and has more than doubled since the start of the decade. Any Google search will kick up more than a dozen offshore services, including some - like BetUS.com - that give it all an air of legality.

Already, several offshore casinos have closed as a result of the crackdown. Others like PinnacleSports.com, wary of the Justice Department, will no longer take bets from clients located in the United States. Many still do, but the impenetrable ebullience that dominated this industry last year at this time has given way to fear.

"For me, I would like them to stay open," said Lang. "Because the offshore betting has cleaned up the business. This moves us back towards the dark side to the cornerstore mobster who would just as soon beat you up for $100."

That dark side has another facet that Lang thinks the government has overlooked: With an estimated 2,300 online sports books affecting the line right up to the game's start, fixing games becomes more difficult. "Really," said Lang, "we're regressing."

Maybe. But the real loss should the offshore casinos be drowned would be in the lost incentive to create more and more proposition bets, especially among those of us who like to read about bets more than we like placing them. There were nearly 300 bets listed on the Pinnacle Web site yesterday, everything from whether heads will be called on the coin toss to whether the final score will add up to an odd or even number.

"Ten years ago, we were just betting on who the MVP was going to be," said Reed Richards of BetUS.com, which formulated the Prince wager. "With the Super Bowl especially, you want to create as much variety. As an on-line sports book, you really need to make it fun."

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