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Online Poker Means Big Money
Poker is the game to bet on when it comes to the huge potential profits to
be made in online gambling. The new surge in online poker playing is the
most expansive event to hit the internet since the early days of the dotcom
rush. According to the online site Ladbrokes, almost $60 million was bet
last year on online poker sites every day in 2005, and has been up every
year since its debut.
Getting in on that debut was critical if you wanted to make your own fortune
off the luck of others, though. Albert Tapper, general manager at Ladbrokes
Poker, states, “Launching early was a key critical advantage. We launched in
May 2002 and we were the first big name betting brand to launch online
poker. We established ‘liquidity’ early on, which is the word used in the
industry for having lots of players.
“Lots of players is critical because it means you can offer a range of
tournaments and a good choice of cash games.” Tapper insists that
referring to the current phenomenon of online poker is erroneous, because it
implies that a bust is looming in the future. The research of his company
suggest quite the contrary, that the future of online poker is bright due to
the age of the main participants. The company’s report from January 2006
shows that 60% of players are under thirty years old, and that the average
age of an online poker player is just 32. The biggest demographic for online
poker players is the nineteen year old age group.
“I don’t think that it is right to say that online poker is a bubble that is
just about to burst. There are a huge number of people playing; at peak
times we will be dealing with 15,000 hands being played and that is a lot of
games.
“The internet bubble was more speculative. There is more substance to the
online poker business, in that it’s happening for real.”
Information gathered by Lee Ferris, poker marketing manager for the sports
betting firm Victor Chandler, corroborates this statement.
“Some of the greatest dotcom successes- eBay, Amazon, online poker- have
been as a result of clever reinvention of a product or service repositioned
properly for the online consumer.
Based on my experience, a large factor in the dotcom bust was companies
foisting products and services on consumers for which no market existed.
This was under the assumption that the internet as the platform would drive
the demand.”
Online poker, as a service for which the demand was already and continues to
be in place, appears to be under no danger of succumbing to a pin prick
anytime soon.
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