College students create a free and legal gambling website in response to the 2006 “SAFEPort Act” which made depositing money into an online bookie illegal.
OlatheKansas, Wednesday January 7th 2008. Internet gambling websites are becoming increasingly difficult to utilize as users are finding it nearly impossible to deposit money into gambling websites. Quarterbets.com has created a solution to this problem. Quarterbets sets itself apart form regular gambling websites because they do not let users deposit money into an account. Instead, the website gives the user twenty-five cents to make their first bet. The user then builds their winnings upon this “free” quarter. If the bet is lost, Quarterbets will provide the user with another quarter to try again. Once the user accumulates an account of at least twenty-dollars, he or she may cash out and receive a check in the mail from Quarterbets.
In 2006 the “Safe Port Act” was passed which prohibited users from depositing money into an online gambling company. Previously, internet bookies got around the sticky problem of online gambling by moving off-shore where laws were less strict. There, users could still deposit money into the site through means of credit cards and other similar payment methods. However, the “Safe Port Act” made the transfer of funds from American based banking companies to foreign gambling institutions inaccessible. The act stated that an online gambling website cannot allow users to violate, “consideration, chance, and reward.” To the everyday bettor, this means that no one can deposit money into a site and then wager that money on the outcome of a game in hopes to get more money back as a reward. The catch is that the online bookies must violate all three elements to be considered illegal.
Quarterbets is completely legal in the United States because it does not allow a user to deposit money into the website. Instead, Quarterbets generates revenue from the advertisers who publish on the site. As long as the site can produce enough traffic from users, the payments from the advertisers should cover the cash-outs from the users. If the site cannot generate enough hits then they will be paying the cash outs from their own pocket. It’s a risk, “but it’s a risk we are willing to take”, says Jeremiah Reardon, part owner of the website. “We think that the benefits from creating an environment where users can legally bet on games, outweigh the cost of having to pay a little out of our own pocket at the beginning.” The site has recently updated NHL games and Tennis matchups to the list of games that are available to bet on. MLB games have been scheduled to be available to bet on by start of the season in ’09.
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