Home / Poker News November 2012 / MGM Grabs Preliminary Online Poker License Approval
MGM Grabs Preliminary Online Poker License Approval
Posted by: Randy Williams - Fri, 2012-11-02 05:01
The race for legal
online poker heats up in Nevada, even as none of the operators who have secured all sorts of preliminary approvals and licenses have yet launched their poker rooms. The latest major live casino operator to join the fray is MGM Resorts International, which managed to secure a preliminary license approval on Thursday. The approval was handed out by a three-member commission of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, after a thorough hearing that MGM was subjected to.
The company has thus taken an all-important step towards being able to put its bwin.party online poker platform to use sometime in the future. MGM plans to launch its online poker room in early 2013. The application for the final license will be submitted towards the end of November.
According to MGM CEO Jim Murren, while the above said license would be for intra-state online poker purposes only, bigger things are looming on the horizon. Murren said he was excited about the fact that while working on their own online poker laws, various states were already engaged in talks regarding possible future compacts that would allow players from different states to legally play amongst them.
Murren also said he essentially viewed such compacts as a necessity rather than an option, as single-state player pools would suffer and they would eventually prove unviable.
The first step in MGM’s quest for legal online poker was to team up with Boyd Gaming and
bwin.party and it has been taken as early as last October. The partnership has bwin.party with a 65% share of the action, while MGM has a 25% cut and Boyd Gaming a 10% one.
Boyd gaming has already secured its license while bwin.party have also submitted a request a while ago.
