Surely there are huge sums of money to be made profiting from an addiction attached to money with no physical product that is available. Via Alan Meckler I read a NYT article about how big institutional investors are betting on online gaming, in spite of it being illegal in the US.

A large part of the reason online gaming is illegal is that tradional casinos (big money) do not want additional competition, but the institutional investers (big money) will probably hedge off any legal action.