Jan. 2008 Archived Changes for US Gambling Marketing

Please refer to the US poker section for recent changes.

January 31

2:45pm – Leading gambling analysts at Daniel Stewart are reporting that Neteller will be the likeliest target for a takeover in 2008.  Reasons being; strong growth potential and conclusions in the discussions with the US DOJ.

1:25am - In an article posted by egrmagazine.com the PartyGaming CEO, Mitch Garber said he was “extremely confident” that discussions with the US Department of Justice over a financial settlement with regard to the company’s previous activities in the US will be concluded before the year is out.  This he says will result in a huge mergers and acquisitions period.  Partygamings Q4 report also revealed a 52% increase in revenues from the same period last year.

1:15am – Facebook has entered the online poker market, play money of course.  With over 300,000 people playing at the free money tables already, imagine the money they would make if owning a poker site ever becomes legal in the US.  Cha-ching.  Also, Bluffthis, a twoplustwo member pointed out that imega.org, at this time, is a parked domain!  Likely just a technical mishap but nonetheless, not good.

January 29

12:31pm – The Italians are at it again.  888 sent an email to let us know the Italian Authority AAMS is IP blocking 888.com and respected poker brands, again.  888 said they will continue to service the Italian market and has simply created a new domain for their Italian players.

January 25

1:23pm – In J. Todds video it covers mostly international news and a little bit about US news towards the end.  Also, as pointed out in the video clip, which I missed the other day, was an article announcing a press briefing on discriminatory US practices against European online gaming sites filed by the RGA which will be held January 28.

January 24

2:08pm – Egaming Review posted an interview today with Barclays Bank speaking about ex-US facing companies having a tough time raising capital because of looming “deals” with the US DOJ.  Partygaming, 888, and Sportingbet were mentioned in the interview with Mark Hewson of Barclays as likely candidates to come to similar deals as Neteller….the paying out of millions of dollars.  In Netellers case it was $136 million.  Hewson also predicted that online gaming would not take much of a turn for the worse, even if economies continue to do so.  He said it’s this looming US issue with ex-US accepted gaming sites that are holding these gaming sites back.  You need to be a member of the site to view the articles they publish.

January 22

2:15am – The Antigua Sun posted a very short follow up story about the discussions held last week between Antigua and the US Trade Representative.  The article doesn’t disclose much information at all unfortunately.

January 18

11:12pm – Here is a brief review of things that happened the past few days.  American Express is no longer allowing Duplicate Poker to accept transactions despite Duplicatepoker being considered a skill poker site because of how it’s setup.

Antigua and the US had a sit down discussion regarding the internet gambling issue as reported by MSNBC. Neteller released earlier this week that out of the $94 million in funds owed to US customers, $81 million has been cashed out.  That means $13 million has yet to be claimed.  The deadline to cashout your money is January 26, 2008 if you still have funds on Neteller!

Party Poker has continued to lose ground in player traffic rankings to their competitors.  iPoker, a non-US accepted site, has taken 3rd position leaving Party Poker at 4th amongst the largest poker rooms online.  This slide is mainly do to Party Poker’s traffic being somewhat stagnant while iPoker has shown strong growth in player volumes over the past two months.

J. Todd this week goes over the EU vs. Germany topic, the Absolute Poker investigation and the UNLV study on internet gambling.  The study asked 1000 people of Nevada if they wanted to have internet gambling legalized and 65% said no.  J. Todd made a good point that most people in Nevada would rather just go to a casino and gamble rather than do it online.

January 16

1:31am – There has not been much to talk about with US poker issues lately.  Most people are talking about how much they owe Uncle Sam. The PPA put up a nice little article about the Presidential Primary Candidates position on internet poker. Not a bad little recap.  Oh and by the way, I got a nice little letter from Western Union saying I’m not allowed to mention their name on my site so in the next few days I’ll probably just rename it to “cash transfer” like everyone else does.

January 12

1:14am – This weeks Perspectives Weekly video has gotten quite a bunch of page views so far today.  Seems to be a popular episode.  He talks about two issues, the online sportsbetting arrest that happened a couple days ago and also about an actor who attempted suicide whereas the press blamed it on internet gambling and not the fact that he had just got fired from his job.

January 9

10:33pm – The Dynamic Gaming Systems (DGS) network is rumored to be shutting down.  No press releases have been released but there has been troubles with the company as of late reported sportsbookreview which uses their systems.  Included skins are Jungle poker, Wingows, USAokpoker, dollypoker, butcherpoker, and the onlinepokertour.  There is an extreme caution for Jungle poker, as it is also rumored that payouts might not be settled with this company.  After attempting to contact DGS the phone number was basically dead and said “This mailbox does not exist”.  So nothing’s confirmed but if you have money in any of these sites it’s better safe than sorry.  We will remove them from the US accepted lists once confirmation is received.

January 7

1:26pm – G911 posted an article today about Partygaming having to pay the US $20 million in “backed taxes”.  At this point I’m still having a hard time verifying if it’s true.  There are no other news bodies reporting on the topic, and you’d think it would be hot news with the investors….which as far as I can see haven’t heard about it either.  Anyways the story, which I won’t link up until it’s verified to be true, says that PartyGaming plans on paying the US $20million for income generated in 2006.  This is supposedly based on a 15% tax on Partygamings 2006 pretax profit of $138 million.  Sometimes G911 comes out with some inside information but they’ve been known to post false information as well so if you’re investor, take this news very lightly.  As of now PRTY is down .93% today.

January 5

7:58am – It’s been a slow news week but J. Todd still issued his video for the New Year.  He covers how it’s “Poetic justice” that Hollywood will be hurt by the Trade agreements and J. Todd also discusses a little bit more about the Germany issue.

January 3

12:52pm – I called the press office at the DOJ today to see if there has been any updates with the sentencing of the neteller co-founders.  There has been no updates on the adjourned sentencing which was supposed to be ruled on months ago.

3:45am – Mr Rose, gambling law professor, has finished up the article for us recapping the WTO events.  If you’re not interested in that, even though it’s a great review, there is a section at the bottom that talks more about what is going on now.  One sentence that caught my eye was that he thinks the Treasury will look over the comments made on the Proposed regulations and issue a whole new set of proposed regulations.