Speaking at the GamblingCompliance Executive Briefing held earlier this week in London, UK industry observers agreed that the Government's decision to officially shelve plans for a super-casino gives weight to concerns that the 2005 Gambling Act will not bring with it the new era of deregulation originally promised.

According to the Valencia-based Spanish Association of Private Bookmakers, Spaniards gambled a total of €650m online during the course of 2007 – an increase of 56 percent from 2006. Betting on sporting icons such as Ronaldinho, Rafael Nadal and Fernando Alonso is the most popular activity – but Sunday’s general election has also attracted the interest of Spanish punters.

The US State Department says that the rapid growth of the global casino industry represents an increasing threat to international anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing efforts. With Macau’s casino VIP rooms coming under particularly close scrutiny, GamblingCompliance asks whether the State Department’s concerns are justified.

The gambling industry is becoming increasingly fascinated by the potential of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, whether literally as venues for betting pools, or as models of what their own sites could become. But the explosion of interest in Web 2.0 communities has brought with it attention from authorities and regulators, and doubts about whether industry self-regulation will continue to satisfy them.

For an industry that once boasted of its recession-proof credentials, gambling stocks in the UK are beginning to show their sensitive side this week as wider economic and market woes weighed on their valuations.

This week’s Gambling Compliance podcast looks at how recent events have proved once again how hopes of even tiny steps in the US with regard to online gaming can be stymied by a political process little understood outside of the Washington DC Beltway – and how the industry’s California dreaming will likely turn out to be just that.