Last month I posted an article about what would really happen if online gaming was legalized in the US. I’ll spare you reading the entire boring post and just pluck out the most important part:
Any legalization of online gaming will come with a regulatory body who will determine who can and cannot offer gaming to US citizens. One of the big assumptions at the moment is that because PartyPoker paid a fine that they are clean. Actually, part of the settlement was an admission of guilt. That admission may come back to haunt them if companies like Harrah’s lobby for licensing requirements that state that any company allowed to offer gaming cannot have illegally offered gaming previously. It’s a perfectly logical requirement and one that many people would agree with so I don’t think it would be too difficult for a land based casino to attempt to get it inserted into any licensing requirements.
In reality, I would be very surprised if any of the current top online poker rooms ever get a license to operate in the US. If I was Mitch Garber running Harrah’s online division I would pump as much lobbying money as it took to make sure that the licensing requirements were sufficiently stringent that all existing online poker sites would be disqualified.
Well news is coming out of the Gaming Executive Summit in Madrid that I may be right on the mark about this. First, 888 CEO, Gigi Levy, was quoted as saying:
“The US will be protectionist even if it regulates, and its withdrawal from its GATS commitments means it doesn’t have to conform to any WTO regulation on internet gambling.
“There are five other states [with California] we know of that are considering regulating online poker, and we know the licences will go to US companies.”
Sitting on the same panel as Levy, Jim Ryan, CEO of Party Gaming, said:
“The [egaming] world is changing as regulation takes different shape in different markets. But upcoming regulation means new entrants and competition in the market, and I worry less about direct competitors such as those sitting on this panel than I do about government-licensed operators and major media firms targeting their power markets in the future.”
So it does sound like both 888 and Party Gaming are starting to worry that they may find the doors closed to them in the US if and when online gaming becomes legal.
I also think that Ryan is on the mark when he mentions major media firms. Although they’re not technically a media firm, but what if Google decided to get into the online poker business once it was legalized? How long would it take them to capture a major piece of the market and effectively shut out competitors? They would own the fish market and the sharks go where the fish are.
Photocred to emilywjones
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I don’t think it’s unimaginable. As a matter of fact, I think it’s dead on. Google, Yahoo, etc would own a market like this. The question still becomes whether or not mainstream sites will want to test the morality waters. Kinda like how Coke and others have stayed away from high profile poker sponsorship.
Of course the promise of big dollars and stock prices will have a bigger say than John and Jane Baptist.
I’ve written several pieces on this as well, and have two more coming.
Riggs,
Well Yahoo does have a Boss Media skin for European players. They don’t promote it much. But then again, Yahoo is pretty much not doing anything well. :-)
Bill