Part 1 - Interview With Casino On Net
Nobody seemed to know, when I asked around..... At one point I was told that Casino On Net was run by 8 huge companies and did not make any profit at all - which would explain how they can afford advertising at the scale that Casino On Net do. Yesterday I finally found some answers in an article found on Business2.com - it was a interview with Casino On Net, the worlds - by far - biggest online casino website.
Related pages @ Online-Casinos.com: Casino On Net Review. We have also reviewed the sister site Reef Club: Reef Club Casino Review and their online poker room Pacific Poker: Pacific Poker Review.
Below you can read the very interesting article about Casino On Net.
"There's something of the night about this industry," a Merrill Lynch (MER) investment banker has warned. One evening in November in the lobby of London's Landmark hotel, where the elusive operator of the world's largest online casino is about to appear, the banker's words ring true.
The few people in Internet gambling who have met the operator refuse to talk about him. His organization, scattered around the globe under names like Cassava Enterprises and Virtual Holdings, hasn't responded to e-mail. It took weeks just to learn his identity amid rumored ties to the Russian mob and porn money. He never talks to the press. Any minute now, the operator will arrive, probably in a Rolls Royce, wearing gold chains, with bodyguards in tow. More likely, Mr. Big won't show up at all.
Then, in strolls John Anderson. With shaggy brown hair and round wire-rimmed glasses, he looks vaguely like John Lennon. He is alone, buttoned-down, and speaks with the flat, clinical precision of an accountant -- which, as it happens, he is. Those rumors of mob or porn ties are, by all accounts, nonsense. Sipping soda in the Landmark's lounge, Anderson explains how the lessons of 26 years as a respected gaming and hotel executive molded the company he now runs, an amazing profit machine called Casino-on-Net.
Anderson's Casino on Net made about $50 million last year, as much as a big Las Vegas casino and more than all but a handful of Internet companies. Analysts estimate its 2002 revenue at about $200 million and say the company is the biggest casino in the fast-growing $4.2 billion-a-year online gambling industry. Anderson, at 52, has found an especially sophisticated way to tap a lucrative vein of stay-at-home bettors. "Lots of cash flow, no distribution, and no real estate," Anderson says. "It's the perfect business."
Actually, there are a few flaws. More than half of Casino on Net's customers live in the United States, and the Justice Department asserts that taking U.S. bets online is a crime. Congressional critics have been thundering against the moral scourge of online gambling, pressing for tougher laws, and even accusing Internet casinos of laundering money for terrorists.
"Do I look like some money-laundering terrorist?" Anderson asks in a thick Scottish brogue. Then he grins. "I don't know," he says. "Maybe I do."
