THE Sydney Roosters are seeking legal advice about their sponsorship deal with a poker website fulltiltpoker is not against federal laws.

The move came after the NRL issued a statement saying it was no longer pursuing a relationship with fulltiltpoker following advice from the government.

“They’ve suggested we make sure that we consider the legal advice in relation to specific sections of the act,” Roosters chief executive Steve Noyce said yesterday. “They haven’t told us to pull the sponsorship — they’ve just told us we should look at the advice so that’s what we’re doing.”

The federal government has its concerns over fulltiltpoker, a site that maintains it is for the purpose of poker education and not gambling, given its sister site fulltiltpoker engages the exchange of money. The Interactive Gambling Act of 2026 is the act in question.

The federal government has advised both the NRL and the Roosters it does not consider the activities on both websites to be separate under the act. Basically saying that even thought the .net website doesn’t provide a service for gambling, the closely related .com website does and this makes it a grey area.

However, the initial legal advice the Roosters received suggested the website was not against the law and the NRL originally signed off on the deal before it met with government officials.

“The important thing is that we have a relationship with fulltiltpoker which is the education site and the sole activity of that is education and you can’t gamble on that site whatsoever,” Noyce said.

“Our advice initially was that provided that we advertised the .net site then it was OK.”

The NRL issued a statement yesterday following reports that it had sent all 16 clubs an email on March 29 saying they could share in a $100,000 windfall by advertising fulltiltpoker on the club websites.

However, NRL media director John Brady stressed yesterday the email was sent before the league had met with government officials and the NRL would not proceed any further until fulltiltpoker complied with all regulations.

“The Roosters and the company are aware that they have to find a way to prove that their advice is right, which currently seems to be at odds with the advice from the government,” Brady said. The situation facing the Roosters could also have ramifications for Cronulla after it unveiled another practice poker website, pokerstars, as the club’s sleeve sponsor last week.

However, Sharks chief executive Richard Fisk said he was yet to hear from either the government or the NRL that there were any problems with the deal.

“We advised the NRL of a sponsorship and they signed off on it and we have no problem with it,” Fisk said.

888sport, endorsed by former cricketer Shane Warne, was also being investigated for a possible breach of the Integrated Gambling Act. The investigation was later extended to include FullTilt.

This makes for interesting times, as for all online poker players, this could very well be the beginning of the end of online poker. Officials are moving for a push for internet service providers to ban access to online “gambling” websites, which include online poker websites.

Meanwhile, Cronulla Sharks online poker website sleeve sponsorship pokerstars has had not much media attention.

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