Casino executives see future online

The land-based casino industry has had a “state the obvious” moment. A conference on the east coast of the United States has decided that the future of the industry might not involve brick and mortar.

A panel of online and land-based casino executives at the East Coast Gaming Congress agreed that the annual revenue from legalized online gaming in the US could hit $80billion in estimated annual revenue.

One member of the panel, Jan Jones president of governmental relations for Caesars Entertainment, said, “You’re not going to stop the Internet. You can regulate it, you can put in protections, but it’s going to exist.”

You only had to look before the Black Friday indictments at the deals being made by land-based casinos like Wynn Resorts with online poker operators. Deals that were made by a few companies with two of the indicted, PokerStars and Full Tilt were terminated almost immediately. It only goes to show the efforts being made by land-based groups to diversify.

The panel also went on to discuss whether or not legislation will be seen at any point soon. Richard Bronson, chairman of US Digital Gaming, predicted that individual states will approve certain types of gaming soon. He added that, “I believe strongly there will not be a national online gambling bill passed in the US. I’ve yet to find one governor, one legislator, one lottery director that tells me otherwise. They want this to be a state issue.”

New Jersey is likely to have a referendum on the ballot paper later this year and with other states pushing for poker regulation it might only be a matter of time. There’s no doubt that Black Friday has had a significant effect on this though.

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