Travel to USA may be restricted, but casino ads will go ahead

The BetonSports crisis in the USA may have discouraged Party Gaming executives from travel in that country, but the Gibraltar based online gambling group is to go ahead with a major advertising campaign for its PartyCasino site.

Last week at a press conference on the group's latest positive business results, PartyGaming executives admitted they had "no imminent plans" to travel to the United States and would seek legal advice if it was necessary. But they stressed they would not be driven out of the lucrative American market by the confusing legal situation.

Chief executive Mitch Garber said that unlike online poker, where big marketing campaigns have driven soaring revenues, the company's casino games have not been marketed before. The group intends to rectify this with a "strong branding campaign" across Europe and North America for its PartyCasino website, which was launched earlier this year and now offers 39 games including blackjack and slots.

Garber said the action against BetonSports would not stop his company from "legally marketing in the US" through a variety of channels - internet, television, radio, newspapers and sponsorship deals. A PartyGaming spokesman later said a lot of the advertising would be online. "We've had success with PartyCasino even before we've pumped up the advertising," he added, revealing that Blackjack was a huge hit when it was launched last October.

PartyGaming runs poker and casino websites and gets 76 per cent of its revenues from the US, but does not take sports bets over the telephone, which is banned explicitly by the 1961 Wire Act and at the heart of the charges levelled against BetonSports.

Casino games currently notch up net daily revenues of $800 000 while poker generates $2.7 million. The group recently added backgammon and bingo to its offering.

Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa