Damping Poker Note From Gambling Group

Published: Sunday, May 14, 2006 Online-Casinos.com

DAMPENING POKER NOTE FROM 888 ONLINE GAMBLING GROUP

Reminder of Party Gaming pessimism a year ago

In an interview with the UK Financial Times last week the CEO of 888 Online Gambling Group, John Anderson made a logical if sobering statement that was widely and pessimistically reported by the world media.

Talking generally about the ongoing Internet and land poker boom, Anderson observed that the 'online poker bubble' will burst and that the rate of user sign-ups cannot be sustained.

"The exponential rates we have seen just can't keep going," said Anderson. "If it keeps going no one in the world will be working. We'll all be playing online poker!"

However, Anderson's latest statement seems to contradict what he told The Times back in September 2005, following 888.com's poor share results.

"Our reliance on the US market is low and internet penetration is still at a very low level," he said at the time.

Not everyone agrees with Anderson's latest gloomy assessment. "If you're talking about exponential growth there is a very real ceiling to those limits, but there are still very healthy growth rates," said Simon Prodger, marketing director at PKR.com, a more recent arrival on the poker scene.

"At the moment every poker site's idea of product development is to add blackjack, which isn't really developing the product for the user," said Prodger, who believes that a huge untapped market exists among offline poker players around the world before online sites even try to attract new players.

The upbeat Prodger says: "Rumours suggest 100 million poker players worldwide, so if that's true you're looking at two per cent of the market playing online in any given month. Poker videogames often sell two to three million units and that's often more people than are playing online."