Gambling News - July 2005 Edition

"Conference Highlights Net Poker's Popularity"

Convention Center in Las Vegas is conference center for promotion of Internet gambling sites!

The Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada is the venue for a convention of marketing experts and lawyers who met to discuss how best to advise online poker operators on the promotion of their Internet gambling sites. Online gambling is illegal in the United States, including the state of Nevada, but that didn’t stop Calvin Ayre, CEO of Bodog.com, from hosting the gathering. Bodog.com is currently one of the Internet’s largest sports betting sites and in order to capitalize on the Internet poker boom, recently launched an online poker room.

There was some irony in the selection of the venue for this conference, but Ayre, a Canadian whose site is based in Costa Rica, believes Las Vegas is a suitable location for such a conference. In a statement about the relationship between Las Vegas and online gambling sites, he said, “the progressive casinos ... acknowledge the industry for what it is…. We are a large feeder system for the casinos and Las Vegas is the center of this space.”

The original conference hosted by Bodog.com was more of an insider party for sports handicappers three years ago. Now it is the largest promotional activity for the online gambling industry. Ayre, unlike most of the investors and operators of online gambling sites, doesn’t hide from the spotlight, saying that he’s not afraid of the US ban on Internet gambling. “We don't go out of our way to tap people in Nevada, but we don't block bets from Nevada either," he said. "We don't do business in Nevada. It’s not our responsibility to police jurisdictions around the world."

The conference began one day before the start of the championship event of the World Series of Poker. This Series, which is hosted at the Rio convention center, is the largest poker tournament in the world. It is referred to by some in the poker world as the Super Bowl of poker.

Approximately 6000 players registered to play at the 200 poker tables awaiting them in the ballroom with 2000 of those players facing off the first day of the tournament. The event itself is divided up into three groups over three days so that they can all fit into the Rio’s ballroom. The first prize winner at the tournament takes home a jackpot of seven million dollars and runners-up each receive a cool one million dollar prize.

According to Jeff Shulman, a poker player and publisher of Card Player Magazine in Las Vegas, as many as one third of the entrants to the final tournament will have obtained their seats in one way or another through online poker sites such as Bodog.com. He added, “casinos know how important online sites are”.

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