The Board’s survey found that 5.7 percent of New Zealanders, or 177 000 people, are gambling on offshore websites, overseas lotteries and sports betting, spending NZ$2.1 billion a year, or just under $40 million a week.

However, only $5.5 million a week is being spent on overseas racing and sports betting, with the rest on other forms of gambling.

Problem Gambling Foundation spokesman David Coom said the survey confirmed that overseas online gambling was “a really fast-growing problem”.

“It’s totally unregulated and there’s no ability to do any host responsibility around it,” he said. “One of the big issues with problem gambling is that it flourishes and thrives in secrecy, and of course online you can just sit at home and access it all you like.

“We are starting to see cases come through where parents are bringing in their teenagers who are spending up to 60 hours a week online. We are just about to embark on some research with youth to see what actually is going on.”

Coom may be better served accessing the results of extensive user surveys on Internet gambling that have already been completed by internationally respected organisations like the Harvard Medical School Addictions Division, where Dr. Howard Saffer and his team have confirmed that online gambling is substantially less addictive than live gambling.

The New Zealand Herald comments that if the Racing Board’s survey is correct, it means that about a sixth of New Zealand’s total gambling spending is going overseas. Official figures show that New Zealanders gambled NZ$12.9 billion within the country in the year to last June - just over NZ$10 billion on poker machines in pubs and clubs, NZ$1.5 billion on racing, NZ$778 million on Lotto and NZ$477 million in casinos.

Lotteries Commission spokeswoman Karen Jones said only 2.5 to 3 percent of lotto sales were online.

Predictably, the numbers have given racing authorities food for commercial thought. The Racing Board’s Bill Colgan said that if the money being gambled online overseas was bet on local races instead it would create the equivalent of 3 600 extra full-time jobs in the racing industry.

“Many of these offshore operators are not required and do not have in place any proactive measures to minimise the harm from problem gambling,” he said, without substantiating his rather sweeping and general claim.

Apparently the film, which does not yet have a working title, will be centred on Costa Rica, the operating base of many online gambling enterprises

Brian Koppelman and David Levien, whose previous works include Rounders, The Girlfriend Experience and Ocean’s Thirteen are responsible for the screenplay on the Paramount production, with Appian Way’s Jennifer Davisson Killoran set to act as the film’s producer, reports Variety magazine.

Hopefully the upcoming film will enjoy more success than its roundly panned predecessor “Deal”, which reportedly made only $35 281 during its opening weekend - equating to just over 4 500 paying viewers!

DiCaprio has more than a passing knowledge of the Internet gambling business, having liaised with veteran online and live poker legend Doyle Brunson on environmental projects.

Congressional Representatives Steve Driehaus (Ohio), Jared Polis (Colorado), Raul M. Grijalva (Arizona) and Steve Israel (New York) are the latest to sign up for the bill, for which Frank, who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has high hopes in a more enlightened and Democrat-dominated Congress.

InfoPowa reported earlier this week that a companion Bill launched by Franks to delay by a year the implementation of the controversial regulations underpinning the UIGEA has so far attracted 13 co-sponsors. HR2266 - the Reasonable Prudence in Regulation Act - was launched May 6 2009 and seeks a hold on the UIGEA until December 2010 when there is more clarity and the outcome of HR 2267 proposing to regulate and licence online gambling in the USA is known.

Industry observers hope that the current HR 2267, which supports the autonomy of individual states, excludes sportsbetting but seeks to legalise and regulate online gambling in the United States, thus rendering the contentious UIGEA largely redundant, will have a better chance of success, given the need for more tax revenues by recession-hit states within the Union. Recent world trade events such as the European Union condemnation of American discriminatory anti-online gambling enforcement may also influence the debate.

During the raids the police seized 110 computers, and arrested the owners of the premises, together with a total of 12 gamblers aged between 19 and 55.

State Deputy CID chief Supt Nashir Ya said Friday the operators could be fined up to RM200 000 each or jailed for up to five years, or both, if convicted under the Entertainment Enactment for running illegal gambling centres.

The gamblers would be charged under Section 4 (B) of the Common Gaming House Act 1953 which carries a fine, he said.