IS ONLINE POKER GOING OFF THE BOIL?

14 December 2007

Online gambling exec thinks it may have


Speaking to the UK newspaper The Evening Standard following the release of his company's Q1 results this week, the Sportingbet plc CEO Andy McIver suggested that the Internet poker juggernaut may be losing some momentum.

"There has been a lot of hype in internet poker and that has now come off a bit,' said McIver, the top man in a company that closed the once powerful Paradise Poker website earlier this year, migrating players to the Boss Media network in a major industry deal.
Sportingbet and Paradise Poker were forced out of the United States market late last year by a draconian clampdown on online gambling financial transactions, leading to a GBP 240 million writedown in the value of the business and sending the shares down 90 percent.

The newspaper reported that the quarter 1 results from McIver's company showed that in the three months to end-October this year its poker rake nearly halved to GBP 4.6 million. "That is as a result of significantly reduced liquidity following the loss of US resident players," the statement accompanying the results clarified.

The company plans to concentrate on getting Europeans to bet on sports going forward. Poker and other online casino games now account for only 40 percent of Sportingbet's business, with up to another 40 percent being spent by gamblers on European football.

European sports betting and underlying operating profits in the quarter were both up by about 15 percent, showing that there is still good potential in the European market despite its more competitive nature following the restricted availability of American players, and consequent diversification by online gambling companies into other markets.

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