Home / Poker News November 2014 / Yahoo to Enter the Online Poker Scene
Yahoo to Enter the Online Poker Scene
Posted by: Jo Martin - Tue, 2014-11-04 07:19
Even as the online poker industry is squeezed and fragmented from every direction, some see a future in it. Search giant Yahoo have apparently launched a Texas Holdem portal, obviously aiming to get a foot in the door in case state-by-state legalization of the game in the US goes ahead. Thus far, things don’t look particularly promoting in this respect, as even in the handful of states where legalization and regulation has already occurred, the industry is struggling mightily, plagued by an acute shortage of liquidity.
Obviously, while the said Texas Holdem portal will only feature play money games, it would be extremely easy to turn it into a reliable source of real money revenue, if the legal atmosphere in the US were to change for the better.
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Another path forward in the way of the monetization of their product for Yahoo would be to apply for licenses in the states where the games have already been legalized. That however, doesn’t look like a particularly attractive option at this point, because costs involved in actually securing such a license are way too steep and the process is too fussy. In New Jersey for instance, they would need to secure a land-based partner in one of the Atlantic City casinos, a proposition a lot more daunting that would seem at first glance.
Yahoo have proven in the past that they are indeed fully capable of properly monetizing such proprieties: they have pulled it off with their fantasy football and basketball pages, which – by the way – they have already put to use to advertise their new play money poker offering too.
The
poker community has reacted favorably to Yahoo’s initiative, welcoming the potentially powerful competitor to the current status-quo.
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