WHERETOBET RESURRECTED - AGAIN

12 December 2008

Veteran online gambling directory and information portal now tries the player advocate approach

 

InfoPowa readers who were involved in the online gaming industry in the mid to late 'nineties will remember one of the pioneering online gambling information and directory portals branded WhereToBet, which appears to be undergoing another resurrection this week with the release of press material and some activity on Internet gambling affiliate message boards.

This time around, it appears that the veteran site will be concentrating on player advocacy and forum action. In one press release, Wheretobet's Costa Rican-based representative "Christopher Quinn" claims that the site's forum is the "...flagship sub domain for the soon-to-be redesigned player advocate site Wheretobet.com, which is scheduled to hit the web before the beginning of 2009."

"As players ourselves," Quinn remarks, "We know first-hand how precarious the online gambling industry can be for a new player. The Where to Bet forum serves as a platform from which players can voice their opinions and online gambling experiences, as well as to freely discuss anything and everything related to sports, poker, casinos, bingo and other forms of online betting. By uniting both first time players and online gambling veterans, all forum participants will find good advice and at the same time will enjoy positive social interaction with other people with similar interests, via the forum's edifying content."

Quinn salutes the long record of Wheretobet, which, presumably under diverse owners, has been around since 1997. According to the website, WTB is currently operated by Blue Reef S.A. in Costa Rica, although previous records on the company have shown a VIP Management Services address in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles. Another company in its colourful past was the appropriately named Phoenix Media Group, which in 2005 (see previous InfoPowa report) publicised another WTB rise from the ashes, commenting that WhereToBet had been shelved by its owners.

In June last (2007) year press material from "Simon Eaton" at Blue Reef, claimed the brand had "...broken new territory by becoming the very first user driven gaming site on the internet." Eaton explained that the most popular websites on the internet, like myspace.com and youtube.com are member-driven virtual communities, where the site's users gather to participate together based on common interests, such as social networking in the case of myspace.com, and video sharing in the case of youtube.com." At that time Web 2.0 was a major talking point at industry conferences.

"Wheretobet.com has brought that same successful model to the world of internet gaming," he was quoted as saying at the time.