Online Poker and The American Dream
For a while I haven’t understood why America haven’t monetized online poker. Ofcourse people state ‘politics’ as the reason with the bible belt likely to heavily oppose any attempt at legislation. On the other hand every President seems to pass things that are a lot more objectionable and the longterm effect isn’t particuarly detrimental; Abortion, War in Iraq, Afghanistan … Someone more informed than me could probably come up with a very impressive list of things the American govt. have done to offend the Bible belt.
Cash is King however, especially in the Land of the free where everything has a price. PPA representatives kid themselves Stars is constantly months away from a licence and that the US government can’t turn away the oppurtunity to instantly monetize Star’s volume of traffic.
Although the tax implemented by the Government on Stars would likely be more costly than their current expenditure on payment processors its tough to see Stars turning the opportunity down.
It is well documented their would be an uproar from the land based operators who have been paying hundreds of millions every year and no doubt have a good relationship with the right people.
We’ve established why licensing Stars maybe controverisal but, why are we not seeing Harrah’s Poker or Party Poker USA yet ? Surely they’re turning away millions in tax every month that goes on ?
The name of the game for the US is to monetize poker as effectivley as possible.
Licenced rooms entering the American market now would definitley have their traffic canibilized by Stars. Once players became remotley educated and realised there was another site with; Far higher liquidity, better games, better software and most importantly lower rake it would become a no brainer.
Liquidity is #1 in online poker. You can have the best software, bonuses and customer service but, without a good selection of games its going to be near on impossible to attract a good amount of players. Companies such as Victory Poker just didn’t appreciate this and thought generic branding and shitloads of money would be enough to get them through – it wasn’t.
Case Study France: France now has several licenced rooms such as; Pokerstars, Party and Chilli. FTP haven’t applied for a licence and can offer far greater traffic than the exclusively French facing licencees. They can’t advertise in France however, the majority of semi-serious French players on Stars have jumped to FTP, not PokerStars.Fr .Realistically there is little the French govt can do apart from block FTP (which will take several months and will still be accessible via VPN). Ofcourse FTP don’t stand much of a chance of getting a licence now but, I doubt they ever wanted one.
So, to conclude: The USA are going to slowly hurt Stars and FTP’s liquidity to make their licences worth more to the buyer and to them in terms of tax revenue.
