News

Thursday, 07 April 2011 03:31

Another prominent casino group from Las Vegas, Station Casinos Inc. jumped on the bandwagon and partnered with a top flight online operator, Full Tilt Poker.

In recent weeks we have already seen a big about turn for the once anti-online gambling Las Vegas casino owners as first Harrah's, now trading as Caesars Entertainment have partnered with the UK's 888 Holdings PLC, then Wynn Resorts joined the fray by partnering with prominent online poker operator PokerStars. Now a third big name Las Vegas casino group have joined the party as Station Casinos Inc. signed a partnership deal with the world's largest online poker operator, Full Tilt Poker.

The reason given for the deal between Full Tilt Poker and owners of Station Casino, Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta who are also owners of the UFC and Zuffa Entertainment, is to put their weight behind backing the legalisation of online poker at the Federal level. In similar fashion to the stance by Caesars Entertainment, Fertitta Interactive is not in favour of the legalisation of online poker at the intrastate level because they firmly believe that control of all Internet based gambling would be better and more fairly controlled by the Federal government.

They see the future of Federal legislation in this area as being good for Nevada and benefit it financially. Nevada has long been the leader in running and controlling land based forms of gambling and know all about regulating gambling and working with the thousands of well paid technical jobs in the industry that would be created as a result. They are also keenly aware of the financial benefits not only to the country as a whole but also to Nevada that carefully planned legislation would generate in taxation and spin-off job creation.

It was not so long ago that all casino owners in Las Vegas were dead against allowing online gambling to be made legal in the United States. Those that believed it would create unfair competition for their businesses spent a lot of time, effort and money in lobbying to keep online gambling illegal. It appears that those hard headed business leaders have suddenly warmed to the idea that all those millions in lost revenue can be efficiently mopped up by the very businesses that have the expertise and know-how to take full advantage of the online side of gambling. Those casino owners have realised that gamblers are still pending millions of dollars at online casinos, so they may as well be spending it at online casinos owned and run by them.