Home / Poker News December 2013 / Caesars Entertainment Having Second Thoughts on Online Gambling?
Caesars Entertainment Having Second Thoughts on Online Gambling?
Posted by: James Carter. - Sat, 2013-12-07 10:14
Although Caesars Entertainment was one of the companies that gained early access to the freshly legalized and regulated New Jersey online gambling market, through its land-based operations Caesars Atlantic City, Harrah’s Resort Atlantic City, Bally’s Atlantic City and the Showboat Casino Hotel, and its
online poker operations are already steaming ahead, the results of a detailed analysis performed by the company’s experts point to a rather unsettling truth: despite the fact that it was considered otherwise in the beginning, it seems that online gambling and online poker will in fact directly compete with the company’s land-based offering, and will therefore likely cut into the operations’ bottom line.
Caesars filed a report to regulators a couple of days ago, detailing how its own online gaming will likely affect the visits to its land-based gambling proprieties in Las Vegas as well as in Atlantic City, reducing live traffic and eventually biting into the bottom lines of the operations.
Moreover the said report - filed to the US Securities and Exchange Commission - clearly iterated that the online side of the business would compete with the brick and mortar side.
According to the company, its hardest hit proprieties are likely to be the ones based in Atlantic City, because in New Jersey – unlike in Nevada – online casino gambling has been legalized as well.
According to Caesars’ Gary Thompson though, the report was not a sign that Caesars were having second thoughts about online poker/gambling. It has apparently been filed for legal reasons, listing other potential risks for the business too, like terrorist attack and war.
Thompson also said that the firm and rather pessimistic language of the said report was fully justified by legal reasons and that including such potential risk factors for the business was a legal requirement. He said that in Caesars’ past experience, the opening of additional channels to reach the gambling public has never resulted in visitation declines.
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