Las Vegas In Your Living Room: Nevada Legalizes Online Gambling

Las Vegas could be coming to your home computer in the very near future if the state of Nevada has its way. On Thursday, Nevada governor Brian Sandoval signed a bill into law that allows for online gambling in the state.

More importantly for people outside Nevada, the bill includes a provision that would Nevada to negotiate with other states for online gambling agreements.

Whether or not other states would be all that receptive to such an agreement is still somewhat up in the air. New Jersey’s Chris Christie recently weighed in on online gambling and he said he wasn’t prepared to support it just yet.

Online gambling is becoming big business for companies outside the United States. Facebook recently got in on the action with their UK site. In the United Kingdom, the social networking site will allow you to play their built in card games while wagering real money.

The Las Vegas Sun reports that Governor Sandoval considered passing an online gambling bill the top priority of his administration this year. He touched on the subject in his state of the state address and the Nevada legislature needed just seven hours to pass the bill once they began work on it.

Tech Crunch reports that one of the reasons Nevada rushed through the online gambling provision to beat New Jersey to the punch.

While Christie did veto the Garden State’s latest online gambling initiative, he did say that he believes the state will have a law on the books covering the issue by the end of 2013.

Governor Sandoval even pointed to the friendly race to the finish line when it comes to online gambling Nevada has with New Jersey saying:

“As to our competitor, New Jersey, they should be accustomed to following Nevada,”

In regards to online gambling, will other states follow Nevada’s lead?