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Copyright 2005 Technology Marketing Corp
January 4, 2006
HEADLINE:
Internet boost for poker punters
Body:
(The Birmingham Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Thanks
to the internet and television, poker exploded outside its US
homeland in 2005, and PartyGaming chief executive Richard Segal
sees technology boosting that boom further in 2006.
Internet poker took
a firm hold in 2005, sparking three big London stock market flotations,
generating revenues of around $2 billion and launching games and
books that are now topping Christmas lists around Europe.
Party Gaming takes about half of that $2 billion pot, and it
has big plans for further growth. The company is assessing acquisitions
and everything from mobile phones to interactive television to
access more players.
"The beauty of it all is that we've invented nothing new,"
Mr Segal said at PartyGam-ing's London headquarters. "We're
just taking games that have been around for decades and putting
them in people's homes."
After a high-profile pounds 4.6 billion flotation in June, the
owner of PartyPoker and Starluck Casino saw its market value soar
to over pounds 7 billion.
Cautious words in a September trading statement sent its shares
into a dizzying fall, from which it has finally recovered by taking
a more aggressive stance against its competitors.
This year, PartyGaming plans to launch its new PartyCasino site
to run alongside its existing Starluck Casino, as well as two
new games.
"There will be two new products next year," said Segal.
"In the first half there will be a person-to-person skill
game and in the second half there will be another more akin to
casino."
Party Gaming will also launch a "shared purse", which
will help players switch from game to game.
"If you want to go from playing on Starluck Casino to PartyPoker,
it's currently the equivalent of going from eBay to Amazon,"
said Segal. "It's not just one click away, but that will
change."
Apart from making life easier for players, the shared purse will
make it easier for PartyGaming to cross-sell its various games
to them.
Party Gaming gets 80 per cent of its revenues from the United
States, where poker inhabits a grey area on the fringes of legality.
But in the second half of 2006, PartyGaming plans to launch its
games in six new currencies and languages.
"From an investor's point of view, it will do us well to
reduce our dependence on the United States market," said
Segal.
But he sees problems in Asian expansion with the regulatory environment,
low penetration of broadband Internet and credit cards and with
fraud. "I think Asia is more medium-term than short-term,"
he said.
Although casino games and sports betting are transferring to
mobile phones successfully, poker is proving problematic because
the games can take longer, during which time mobile signals can
fail.
"A sports bet is very easy to place - it's just one text
each way.," said Segal. "But imagine you're playing
poker and have a royal flush in your hand, and then you lose connectivity.
We don't want disgruntled customers.
"It's early days, and we're still looking at test results,
but the indications are not getting us over excited about mobiles,"
he added.
Digital television, by contrast, is proving a promising medium
on which players might soon interact.
PartyGaming has been criticised by some analysts for being too
poker-focused and lacking the opportunities for cross-selling.
"We think cross-selling is important, but we're not obsessing
about whether one of those products is sports betting," said
Segal.
Asked whether PartyGaming was looking to buy a sports betting
operation, he said they were not interested in acquiring companies
that took sports bets from the United States, but they would consider
opportunities elsewhere.
"In an average week, I get one knock on the door, and in
a busy week, three. But that's excluding the banks trying to make
deals happen," he added.
We're just taking games that have been around for decades and
putting them in people's homes
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