Internet gambling sites, beaten back by a federal crackdown, are flexing their marketing muscles again.
The industry, which is legal in Britain and elsewhere overseas, is promoting online gambling and sports betting in plain view of the U.S. public, flouting federal officials who deem the ads illegal.
In New York, for instance, millions of visitors to Times Square in the past few months could see a billboard for sportsbook.com, a sports-betting site.
Web gambling executives said they are pushing to get their ads accepted in more places, while more media companies are finding it harder to resist.
"Our approach is to get our advertising wherever we can," said Mike Foreman, marketing chief for USBets.com, another sports-betting site.
The resurgence of online-gambling advertising follows a two-year lull during which the industry had to get creative with its marketing.
The U.S. Justice Department can't go after offshore gambling firms, so they have targeted the sites' activities here, including media companies that take the online gambling ads.
In 2003, the Justice Department, which takes the position that online gambling is illegal in the U.S., issued a flurry of warning letters and — in some cases, subpoenas — to media companies that ran the ads.
"It's not worth it to screw with it," said one publishing executive, whose company received a warning letter.
Much of the advertising fled to the Internet, often beyond the reach of U.S. law. Despite the legal threats, the ads began creeping back onto radio, late-night TV and magazines in the past year.
The latest issue of Trader Monthly carries four full-page ads from online gambling sites such as sportsbook.com and doylesroom.com.
One sign of trouble cropped up in April, when Esquire magazine received a subpoena after running an eight-page insert from Bodog poker. It was the first reported subpoena since the 2003 crackdown.
While some publishers are willing to risk the government's ire, online gambling companies have developed some clever ways of skirting the legal issues.
Many advertise a free site offering to teach people how to play. These alternate sites share the same name as the dot-com but often end in dot-net.
Partypoker.net and partypoker.com, for instance, are both operated by PartyGaming PLC, a Web gaming company that is licensed in Gibraltar and publicly traded in London.
In some cases, the dot-nets are nothing more than ads for the dot-com site; in others, people type dot-com out of habit and end up at the gambling site anyway.
The strategy, dubbed the dot-net workaround, has been effective in getting media outlets from sports channel ESPN to shock jock Howard Stern's radio show to accept the ads.
"Frankly, there's too much money involved," said Lawrence Walters, a lawyer who represents several online gambling companies. "And the legal issues are just not as clear as the Justice Department would have you believe."
A case winding its way through the court system seeks to challenge the government's stance. Web publisher Casino City argues that banning it from accepting the ads violates the First Amendment.
The industry, which is legal in Britain and elsewhere overseas, is promoting online gambling and sports betting in plain view of the U.S. public, flouting federal officials who deem the ads illegal.
In New York, for instance, millions of visitors to Times Square in the past few months could see a billboard for sportsbook.com, a sports-betting site.
Web gambling executives said they are pushing to get their ads accepted in more places, while more media companies are finding it harder to resist.
"Our approach is to get our advertising wherever we can," said Mike Foreman, marketing chief for USBets.com, another sports-betting site.
The resurgence of online-gambling advertising follows a two-year lull during which the industry had to get creative with its marketing.
The U.S. Justice Department can't go after offshore gambling firms, so they have targeted the sites' activities here, including media companies that take the online gambling ads.
In 2003, the Justice Department, which takes the position that online gambling is illegal in the U.S., issued a flurry of warning letters and — in some cases, subpoenas — to media companies that ran the ads.
"It's not worth it to screw with it," said one publishing executive, whose company received a warning letter.
Much of the advertising fled to the Internet, often beyond the reach of U.S. law. Despite the legal threats, the ads began creeping back onto radio, late-night TV and magazines in the past year.
The latest issue of Trader Monthly carries four full-page ads from online gambling sites such as sportsbook.com and doylesroom.com.
One sign of trouble cropped up in April, when Esquire magazine received a subpoena after running an eight-page insert from Bodog poker. It was the first reported subpoena since the 2003 crackdown.
While some publishers are willing to risk the government's ire, online gambling companies have developed some clever ways of skirting the legal issues.
Many advertise a free site offering to teach people how to play. These alternate sites share the same name as the dot-com but often end in dot-net.
Partypoker.net and partypoker.com, for instance, are both operated by PartyGaming PLC, a Web gaming company that is licensed in Gibraltar and publicly traded in London.
In some cases, the dot-nets are nothing more than ads for the dot-com site; in others, people type dot-com out of habit and end up at the gambling site anyway.
The strategy, dubbed the dot-net workaround, has been effective in getting media outlets from sports channel ESPN to shock jock Howard Stern's radio show to accept the ads.
"Frankly, there's too much money involved," said Lawrence Walters, a lawyer who represents several online gambling companies. "And the legal issues are just not as clear as the Justice Department would have you believe."
A case winding its way through the court system seeks to challenge the government's stance. Web publisher Casino City argues that banning it from accepting the ads violates the First Amendment.