Japan’s penchant for gambling may successfully side-step national laws via the Internet – and deny the local Yakusa gangster fraternity a significant source of income. British bookmaker SSP International Sports Betting Ltd is to offer odds on the Internet to Japanese punters who, despite being keen on the odd flutter, are prohibited by anti-gambling laws from participating domestically. Japanese bets must presently be made by telephoning bookmakers elsewhere in the world. The potential for gambling on the Internet is vast, says Eamonn Wilmott, managing director for London-based Online Magic Ltd, which is developing a betting site for an unnamed client. The US industry alone is worth $40,000m, most of which is illegal and run from off-shore dens. Find a way to bet on the Net, he declares, and you’ve got a goldmine. But Wilmott is uncertain whether Internet security is strong enough yet in an area where a disappointed punter will go to any lengths to prove he did not place the bet in the first place. If someone hacks into your account, responsibility is a great grey area. But SSP’s Japanese business development manager, Eric Sedensky, claims an in-house team developing its own firewall and security technology to run the system, which is to launch in March. SSP’s telephone service already offers odds on international sporting events in 15 languages to 400,000 punters worldwide. The figure includes 4,000 in Japan who at present have to call London to place bets. SSP managing director Derek Greene expects the number of Japanese customers to rise to 12,000 within six months of the company’s Internet debut this spring. Punters will be able to bet for the cost of a local Internet call on anything from soccer to sumo wrestling through the company’s World Wide Web site, giving punters a legal route around the curbs. Resistance to the system will come from a mixed bag of opponents. In addition to the gambling industry, which will have to get its head around the technology, it has been pointed out that placing bets on the Internet will loosen the hold on Japan’s illegal multi-million dollar gambling industry that is currently in the hands of the country’s organised crime syndicates, the Yakuza. Two years ago another UK bookmaker that opened an office in Tokyo to relay bets to be placed in London was closed for violating laws that prohibit betting services within the private sector. SSP said it will face no such problem as all its operations are in London.
