This is a guest contribution by Johnny Jaswal and Brian Thomas Hall, founding Partners of Jaswal Hall. If you would like to submit a contribution please contact Bill Beatty for submission details. Thank you.

As I sit here in the club lounge at the InterContinental Hotel, located in downtown Montreal, I can’t help but think about poker, fantasy sports and chess. Let me explain. My very first visit to the hotel was in the spring of 2008. This is when I met a man who proved to be very influential in my life, Mr. Cookie Lazarus; a mentor and dear friend, and a notable and influential player in the online gaming business. I was 29 years old, graduating from Osgoode Hall Law School and ready to take on the world. I had a background in online gaming and a small network of associates and friends in the business. I arrived at Cookie’s office in my fresh suit and tie, which I bought the week before. I didn’t know it at the time but the ride I was about to go on would send me around the world and introduce me to amazing people, all alongside the best mentor and friend a young lawyer could ask for.

We were in the mix of it. Online gaming was hot and we lived and breathed it. The clients were fun, young and energetic. We were advising internet entertainment companies that were breaking traditions and rules, and driving change. Poker was the hottest thing on the scene. Every time you turned on the television, you would almost certainly see advertisements, programs or mentions of poker, which were sponsored, created and distributed by the major online poker sites, PokerStars, Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker. All three companies where doing business in the US market on the legal theory that poker is a skill-based game and thus permissible in the US. However, in what has become an interesting pattern in US policy, significant energy and resources were expended to halt an activity the US populace would undertake regardless of legal status. The owners of the biggest online poker sites, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker, were indicted and the sites were shut down in the US after the FBI ceased domains on allegations that the sites laundered money and defrauded banks to get around gambling laws (“Black Friday”). The US had made good on its undertakings on online gambling as stated by former attorney general Janet Reno, “you can’t hide online and you can’t hide offshore” (despite the broad statement, which is overreaching, there are various accessible betting websites based in communities like the Kahnawake Mohawk territory in Quebec and the Caribbean, and opportunities exist in the US and abroad under proper structures). In my opinion, similar to the American experience with prohibition, US gambling laws will offer boundless opportunities for criminals to profit off of the legal status of poker while the losers will be the general public looking for an arguably legitimate outlet. This situation, in my opinion, favours a world where the activity is legalized, regulated and taxed like any other legitimate indulgence.

Returning to my story, I went from being fresh and green and in the midst of the exponentially growing poker world, to a post-Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (“UIGEA”) world. Now, seven years later, the hotel has been refurbished, the lounge is on the lobby floor, I am no longer fresh and green, and I am a partner in a legal and investment banking advisory firm, Jaswal Hall. I have learned to analyze fact patterns, anticipate issues and apply my experience. One pattern that does not cease is the constant search for legal ambiguities. In my world, one such instance is the emergence of fantasy sports, which has significant but legal businesses controlled by DraftKings and FanDuel. Fantasy sports, predominantly due to it being classified as a game of skill, was exempted from UIGEA. Fantasy Sports has been backed by almost all major sporting leagues, NFL team owners are among the equity owners in operators and the industry, like ghosts of poker past, has become a mainstream social outlet (one only has to look at the success of the television show The League, a comedy about a group of friends in a fantasy football league).