Opinion: Legalized online gaming would be good for California
By Richard Bronson
I love to look into the past to find clues to the present and the future. It is amazing how you can connect the dots of history and visualize the road ahead. You can see clues in the rearview mirror that are shaping the world of the Internet and online gaming, the most exciting new technology industry in the world today.
Interestingly, I am seeing more of these bread crumbs dusted along the highways and byways of California, where the prospective gold rush of this new industry is a sleeping giant, ready for its awakening moment of impact.
It was in San Francisco in the 1840s and 1850s that California’s gaming legacy was born – during the boomtown days of the mad dash for rare nuggets in the Sierra Nevada. Card rooms and poker parlors dotted the avenues and you could wager on everything from jumping frogs to arm-wrassling on any corner. Now, more than 150 years later, there are as many types of legalized and regulated gambling in California as in any place in America or the world.
Richard “Skip” Bronson is chairman of U.S. Digital Gaming.