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The service from PokerRoom.com -- launched in April -- highlights the fast growth and accessibility of online gambling
Published: 2005-05-03
 UNITED STATES – As reported by the Orlando Sentinel: "…The service from PokerRoom.com -- launched in April -- highlights the fast growth and accessibility of online gambling. The business has grown so much that investment bankers are circling the major players seeking lucrative new stock offerings.
i-Newswire, 2005-05-03 - "Yet any such offerings will not be in the United States -- the result of Internet gambling's great paradox. The U.S. market by far is the world's largest, but the government remains adamantly opposed to Web wagering.
"The stance has kept U.S. companies from venturing into a new market, but it hasn't stopped people from betting online. However, the government hasn't shown the will to bust individual bettors.
"So the U.S. gets no economic benefit from online gambling yet is still saddled with the potential social cost -- a growing venue for problem gamblers to feed their addiction.
"Online gambling is still dwarfed by traditional forms of wagering. Last year, online gamblers comprised about 3.9 percent of the $237 billion global market, according to Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, a European investment bank.
"…PokerRoom.com appears to be the first Web gambling outfit to allow its game to be downloaded into cellular phones.
"…Sweden-based PokerRoom.com is the sixth-biggest Internet card room, though it jockeys back and forth in rank with the fourth- and fifth-placed sites, according to PokerPulse…"
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Internet gambling bets on cellphones
Published: 2005-05-01
 Internet gambling bets on cellphones
By Mike Hughlett | Chicago Tribune
Posted May 1, 2005
Poker has come to the mobile phone.
The service from PokerRoom.com -- launched in April -- highlights the fast growth and accessibility of online gambling. The business has grown so much that investment bankers are circling the major players seeking lucrative new stock offerings.
Yet any such offerings will not be in the United States -- the result of Internet gambling's great paradox. The U.S. market by far is the world's largest, but the government remains adamantly opposed to Web wagering.
The stance has kept U.S. companies from venturing into a new market, but it hasn't stopped people from betting online. However, the government hasn't shown the will to bust individual bettors.
So the U.S. gets no economic benefit from online gambling yet is still saddled with the potential social cost -- a growing venue for problem gamblers to feed their addiction.
Online gambling is still dwarfed by traditional forms of wagering. Last year, online gamblers comprised about 3.9 percent of the $237 billion global market, according to Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, a European investment bank.
But Dresdner's London analysts see online betting rising to 6.5 percent of the total market by 2008. Online poker, an estimated $2.9 billion global business this year, is expected to double in size by 2008, Dresdner forecasts.
Poker is especially fast growing.
The average daily number of players in the Internet's most well-traveled poker rooms zoomed from about 2,400 at the beginning of 2003 to around 60,000 in recent months, according to PokerPulse, a Web site that tracks online-poker sites.
PokerRoom.com appears to be the first Web gambling outfit to allow its game to be downloaded into cellular phones. Other poker sites have been mulling the option, said Sue Schneider, publisher of St. Louis-based Interactive Gaming News.
"It's kind of hard to say how it will take off. You can take up a lot of your allocated [ cellphone minutes] playing poker," she said. That could be expensive, given that airtime is pricier than computer time.
Sweden-based PokerRoom.com is the sixth-biggest Internet card room, though it jockeys back and forth in rank with the fourth- and fifth-placed sites, according to PokerPulse.
PokerRoom.com was created by two Swedish medical-school students with a penchant for poker. Their site started accepting bets in 2001, taking a small percentage -- usually no more than $3 -- off each wager, as is standard in the industry. About 80 percent of the site's customers are in the United States.
Last year, PokerRoom.com's parent company, Ongame, posted sales of $60 million and a tidy operating profit margin of 33 percent. The company is grooming itself for an initial public stock offering, though a final decision hasn't been made, said Patrik Selin, PokerRoom.com's chief executive.
PokerRoom wouldn't be alone in the public markets.
Gibraltar-based PartyGaming, which runs the world's biggest Internet card site, PartyPoker.com, has hired Dresdner to look at an IPO. If PartyGaming goes public, it reportedly would be valued at nearly $5 billion.
Also, two other gambling sites, one based in Gibraltar, the other in London, are considering stock offerings in Great Britain. And Sportingbet, a British online-gambling outfit, saw its stock double last fall after acquiring a leading Internet poker site.
"London is sort of becoming the Silicon Valley of online gaming," said Dennis Boyko, head of Canada-based PokerPulse.
That status could get a boost from a new British law that creates a clear legal framework for online gambling. The law, which went into effect last month, is welcomed by the industry.
"It will be very, very good for us," PokerRoom.com's Selin said. "It's a stamp of approval."
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