Big Threat to Online Gambling Defined

Published: Thursday, August 27, 2009 Online-Casinos.com

Jim Ryan PartyGaming's chief executive officer has seen the future and at the last Gaming Executive Summit in Madrid actually did some predicting. His opinion is that of many who have a knowledge of big business activities and practices. He surmises that media giants and monopolies will threaten the smaller businesses with take overs and unchecked competition.

Online gambling is still relatively new to the world and growing in leaps and bounds so when a big company takes advantage of a smaller one the fear of take over echoes through the entire industry. Media giants such as Google and Yahoo are doing just what is expected of them, cashing in on the small domestic markets and putting their own interests first. Monopolies are used by governments to keep the status quo and balanced budgets. Monopolies are hard to break up and the bigger they are the more established and entrenched they get. So it's no wonder the free enterprise businesses get a little concerned when they are at the mercy of lawmakers and politicians with agendas. Yes, Jim Ryan is right when he is saying these things but for the most part it is really not new to the world of business and in the online gambling world it's easy to understand. Online gambling has so many small venture entrepreneurs and innovative individuals involved in it and because it is new in the gambling sphere it is going through lots of changes. Dealing with monopolies and media involvement is just part of the growing pains the industry faces.

PartyGaming had been forced to compete harder as US-facing poker sites reinvented their huge profits into marketing in Europe, Ryan continued at the summit. "While not ideal, it has been a humbling experience and has forced us to improve our products and offers and to really up our game."

Mr Ryan also said, "The world is changing as regulation takes different shape in different markets. But upcoming regulation means new entrants and competition in the market, and I worry less about direct competitors such as those sitting on this panel than I do about government-licensed operators and major media firms targeting their power markets in the future."