Churchill Downs Incorporated (CDI) has applied for a service provider licence in Nevada with their sights firmly set on the U.S. online poker market. eGR report that the company, which purchased Bluff Media in February, is in talks with a number of software partners and the eventual hope is that they can crack the Nevada based market. Ted Gay, chief strategy officer at the firm stated that they are “spending lots of time focusing on poker and egaming” and recognizes just how influential the Nevada market is.
“Nevada is an important regulatory body and we felt that it was important to be part of the process early on,” Gay said. “We don’t take the challenge [of competing in the online poker market] lightly. The competition will be great and it will be a huge challenge. But we have been an online operator for several years, so in many ways we have an advantage over the land-based [casino] companies. We are evolving the business to remain competitive.”
Speculation is rife that they’re looking for deals with partners in order to pool liquidity on their own network and launch their own poker product via the same medium. A third party would power the network and there is no word if Bluff will be the brand for the product. CDI is no stranger to the online gaming industry after they opened the Twinspires sports betting site way back in 2007. That has grown to become the largest on U.S. soil and they’ll be hoping for similar on the online poker side of things.
