UK Betting Gets Into Online Poker
Published: Friday, March 11, 2005 Online-Casinos.com
UKBETTING GETS INTO ONLINE POKER
And new research predicts even bigger
revenues
Another major Brit gambling group has entered the competitive
but booming Internet poker market with the launch of Ukbetting plc's new online
poker room this week, heralded by predictions that the market could double in
2005.
Shares in the British smallcap were up 4 percent after it announced
that it had launched poker and an online casino on its European gaming Web site
Goldbet.
Gamblers lost $237 billion to gaming companies worldwide in
2004 and will be losing about $277 billion a year by 2008, said a report on Thursday
by investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.
Online gambling has
grown to $9.2 billion since its birth in 1995 and is forecast to produce a 22
percent compound annual growth rate between 2003 and 2008, driven in particular
by poker, said the report. Sports betting represents 45 percent of total online
gambling spending with other gaming representing 32 percent, but both could be
overtaken by poker by 2008, if not earlier, it added.
Online gambling
is becoming a booming industry in Britain, one of the few jurisdictions where
it is welcomed. "We're the market that's embracing online gambling,"
said DKW analyst Andrew Lee.
Online
casino 888., widely expected to go public, recently estimated the amount Britons
are gambling over the Internet has increased more than six times in the last year.
