M ONT H I N M I NUT ES
REPLY
Not rocket science
Peter Karroll CEO, International Arts Management Corp
In his recent article published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Steve Tetrault quotes Nelson Rose, senior professor at Whittier Law School, who told senators “with few exceptions, tribes won’t have the money or the political clout to claim invaluable state licences to offer online poker”. In California, he predicted, a licence would go for “US$100m up front”. If US$100m is the price of a licence to do business in California and to extend land-based casino business to the internet, then state legislators there will be shooting themselves, and everyone else, in the foot. Tribal groups should be at the front of the queue for online licences, and entry should be reasonable and well regulated. The internet is a cost-effective and efficient method of creating new business, as well as growing existing land-based businesses with added revenue streams. Following the countries that have been in the online gambling business for a number of years and have successful gaming licensing models already in place, it is evident that state and federal legislatures are not required to re-invent the wheel. There are already options being put forth from organisations. This gives individual groups a low-cost way to participate in a product that is operating in legal jurisdictions worldwide. Tribal land-based casinos will need to connect their internet businesses with their casino customer base in order to have any chance of retaining those customers once online is legalised in America. The decision must be made not to wait for the state and or federal governments to hand out a share of the leftovers, if that actually happens. The real de?nitive choice is to make the move to get into the online gaming business now, and in a real way, so that when the dust settles the US regional land-based casino operators and tribal groups will both be able to pro?t from a multi-billion dollar industry.
RIGHT
TO
104,000
average number of real-money poker players in January, the first time the figure has crossed 100,000 since May 2011 see H2 Data, p24
YEARS
maximum sentence that Calvin Ayre and his fellow indictees could face after being indicted on charges of money laundering, conspiracy and conducting an illegal gambling business
see people news, p23
THE BIG TOPPLE
Soccer AM's Max Rushden and Bryan 'The Cardstacker' Berg prepare to demolish Big ben made entirely out of cards
US$3bn
estimated market cap of Zynga Poker if it was a separate company to the rest of the social games developer
see Raf Keustermans’ column, p9
“Having a social offering allows us to go into a market and bring the brand to people in that market who otherwise might not connect with it”
Steve Heller, CEO of the World Poker Tour, on the value of convergence between online, offline and social. see cover feature on p34
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NYX GAMING GROUP
Number of land-based and online operator clients for Evolution Gaming see our
interview with CEO Jens von Bahr on p42
FAMILY TREE
NYX Gaming Group was formed following NYX Interactive’s acquisition of Australian games developer NextGen Gaming in November 2011, with integration of the businesses to be completed in the ?rst quarter of this year.
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