News

Monday, 09 August 2010 11:43

With the recent launch of their free to play poker room aimed directly at players in the US, casino giants Harrah's are showing that they mean business.

The Las Vegas casino giant, Harrah's have been making a lot of moves within the Internet gambling industry of late. With the scent of victory in the battle to legalize and regulate the industry in the US spurring them on, they have been busily putting together a slumbering giant that is poised to awaken and make a big noise in the industry as and when it becomes legal in the US.

To start the ball rolling, they have created a new poker room that offers its US players free play facilities so they can enjoy some cashless WSOP action without breaking any existing laws. This comes hot on the heels of Harrah's recent insurgence into the UK online gambling market with online casinos and bingo sites under the brand name of Caesars licensed in the low tax British overseas territory of Gibraltar. In a partnership deal with Dragonfish, Harrah's also launched their latest addition to a growing collection of websites at WSOP.com.

The WSOP brand is set for expansion with the website already open for business in the UK and accepting paying customers (although it is not currently available to US customers). On top of this, they plan on opening a further online casino as well as a new bingo brand to capitalize on the current success of their existing sites. It goes without saying that the moment they get the green light from the US and laws are in place that allow online gambling to take place there, Harrah's will be ready to open their doors to paying US customers.

This is a big turnaround for a Las Vegas based operator as for many years, virtually all the casino owners in that town were staunchly against the legalisation of online gambling. They saw it as a threat to their business in a time when the economic problems had already compromised their financial stability as their collective income fell over the past two years or so. Now that they have seen the potential financial gains in providing online gambling websites with their own brand, it will not be long before others are following the lead of Harrah's and putting their own versions of their land casinos into cyberspace.

After all, the top Las Vegas Casinos already have brand trust and popularity as a solid foundation for launching online versions of their already well frequented brick and mortar casinos. So it makes sound business sense to build on that foundation and project their businesses online to capitalise on their already successful brands.