February 08, 2005

Online Gambling Revenue Explodes Upwards

The latest online gambling figures are out with an estimated $10 billion in revenue this year. That is up 40% from last year. Poker is about 20% of that with 1 million players a month. PartyPoker supposedly has 50% marketshare with $1 billion in revenue a year. That is some major money.

I find it quite hilarious to see the poker sites advertising on TV by using PartyPoker.net and Pokerstars.net as "free poker school education sites." It's a loophole since the actual gambling sites are the .com addresses. Some ads even put the .net in a hard to read format, so most people will type in the .com gambling site anyway. The U.S. government should legalize online gambling and get a chunk of that $10 billion in tax revenue. The cat is out of the bag, people are going to find ways to gamble with these off-shore sites.

More than 2,000 gambling Web sites this year will rake in nearly $10 billion in revenue, most from U.S. consumers. That's up 40% from 2004. In 1996, when lawmakers first sought to curb Internet gambling, 30 sites collected $30 million, says researcher Christiansen Capital Advisors. That makes gambling one of the Internet's largest moneymakers, even though it is illegal... Almost all gambling sites are offshore, where they are immune from U.S. law.Federal and state officials have discouraged some banks from allowing their credit cards to be used for cyberwagers. [Discuss]