Legalization Inevitable, Poker Money too Sweet!
With most states and the Federal Government in desperate need of cash, and the well organized machine that is the PPA, it appears that most “Experts” agree that legalizing online poker is an inevitability.
Andrew Parmentire and David Katz were on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” making these arguments, and i believe they are right on the money. This discussion started with Parmentire stating that Chairman Barney Frank put the bill out there, and a lot of other factors are lining up very well. Harrah’s is showing that they have an online strategy, and with a workable strategy, and a huge need for state and federal cash flow it is just a matter of time (and additional financial stress) until online gambling is legalized.
With the Democrats pushing social programs and no new forms of revenue for the federal government to fund these programs; and with Gambling in the US becoming a more acceptable consumer product.
During the interview, Katz made some excellent points about the longevity of “Brick and Mortar” casinos, the capacity with which they can grow to serve the needs of the many, and the way that online gambling can help to increase revenue through both creating jobs in the economy (someone needs to run the servers, work at call centers, design the programs, etc), and creating new publicly traded companies to invest in.
Excerpt from the interview:
Katz stated to CNBC viewers “Gambling in the U.S. has become a far more acceptable consumer product than it was five or ten years ago. That said, we really are much more focused on the publicly traded companies and that would be the brick-and-mortars like Harrah’s as well as the game providers and the technology companies that support those industries.” Harrah’s inked an agreement with 888, the parent company of Pacific Poker, to fill its online gaming needs. 888 is a publicly traded company in London, where it can be found under the same three-number acronym. Katz explained that with casinos slowly reaching their limits in the live space, the switch to the Web is inevitable: “If you go to the Bellagio, they have a couple of hundred seats to sit in, so there’s a physical constraint. If you look at the number of states out there that are considering legalizing gaming, they’re going down every year. There’s a finite opportunity for the brick-and-mortar guys to expand in the United States and at some point, they have to start thinking globally.”
With the December 1st deadline of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) looming, and Geithner and Bernanke not yet responding to the PPA’s request that the December 1 deadline be postponed a year, this fight is just heating up. Things have changed a lot since 2006 with the UIGEA was first approved in the House of Representatives, and it will be interested to see if the bloated government is willing to act for the betterment of itself and it’s people.
