 Who
is pulling the plug on U.S. online gambling?
It's a misconception that
the online casinos or the gambling companies that own them, are
the ones leaving the USA. There are three major online casino
software providers in the world - PlayTech, Microgaming and RTG.
Those companies provide licenses to the online casinos to use
their software. And when the software maker pulls the plug - all
of its licensed casinos go with it.
That's what happened with PlayTech - they decided that it's not
worth the hustle with the US government and pulled the plug on
the US players - and all of the online casinos using PlayTech
software lost the US market indefinitely. We are predicating
that about 80% of the PlayTech casinos will disappear by the end
of the year. It's a fact that the E.U. market is the only one
left (that is, the only one left worth the money), but Europeans
prefer to bet on sporting events than at the online casino.
Germany is out of the question, as online gambling is illegal
there, France is considering following suit with US, and U.K. is
flooded with online casinos and sports books already. Despite
the fact that in the E.U. market, PlayTech casinos have the
biggest share as of now, the other online casinos are
understandably looking for ways to enter the market big time, so
the competition soon will be fears. It would not be a surprise
if PlayTech disappears completely - by means of being sold to
another company, or just unable to pay the high maintenance
costs with the revenues coming from the small online gambling
markets.
Respectively, Microgaming stopped accepting players from 11 US
states. This was a very bad thing for the casino companies
licensed under this software provider, but at least the US
market was not completely wiped out for them. Although by some
accounts, those states count for nearly 1/3 of the total US
market - better loose one third than the whole. And it seems
that almost all of the banned states are those where offline
gambling is legal.
The smallest of the bunch, RTG, still accepts players from the
United States. And many online casino companies are switching to
them in their strive to tap into the US gambling market for what
might be the last time.
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