An American sportsbetting pioneer recently predicted that the activity will become a reality online within the next few years.

In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, Steve Budin, a former Miami street bookmaker and industry icon stated that the current legal sports betting industry in the US is behind the times. However, he stated that Nevada’s big gaming companies would begin taking sportsbets from gamblers online via a legal, regulated Internet-based national sports book soon.

‘The way that it makes sense is not the traditional brick-and-mortar set-up where it takes eight guys to work a room that’s 2,000 square feet,” said Budin.

“The way to handle it is on the Internet, to the masses, where people can bet $10 or $15 from their home and it doesn’t matter whether one person is playing or 1,000 people are playing. It costs the same amount of money to take the bets. To think that Las Vegas is not going to offer that in the next three years is a little short-sighted.’

Budin is vocal about his lack of respect for the Bush Administration’s tactics at handling online sports gambling issues as its track record is marred by ineptitude and hypocrisy.

‘They’re saying they want to know when the next CEO lands at LaGuardia, like he’s the next shoe bomber,’ said Budin.

He added that legislation designed to cease offshore betting is a stopgap solution at best and is useless in halting the forces of demand and technology.

‘They want to stop the billions of dollars flowing out of the country but I’m sure they realised that the business was going to fall back into the hands of street-based bookmakers, traditionally affiliated with the mob,’ said Budin.