News

Tuesday, 02 November 2010 11:28

Station Casinos are having a tough time economically, so when they found online casinos cashing in on their name, they decided to sue.

Just like many of their land based casino and gambling establishment compatriots, Station casinos are feeling the financial pressures of the current economic downturn. Their struggle to survive the worst of the turmoil has not been helped by what they see as rival online websites using their established brand name in their own brands to funnel search engine traffic and its associated business away from them and into their own pockets.

For this reason, Station Casinos has decided to file a lawsuit against the website operator S.L. Enterprises and UK resident, Ryan Murphy, owner of the domains vegasstationcasino.com and also stationcasino.org upon which are websites operating under the names of "Vegas Station Casino" and "Station Casino Online Gambling" respectively. The main contention of the lawsuit is that these two websites are using the major search engines to attract traffic that might otherwise be looking for information about Station Casinos. Should the case even make it as far as going to trial, this would be a very difficult ideal to prove.

There has always been a rivalry between land based and online casinos, with the move by many gamblers away from the traditional brick and mortar establishments to the convenience of the Internet based casinos. In response to this trend, some land based casinos are fighting back by creating an online presence of their own, seeing this as the only profitable way of competing rather than trying to beat the online industry with laws and regulations, which have been shown to have failed miserably.

Harrahs Entertainment is one such major casino owner that has invested in both sides of the industry. They have been proactive in anticipation of a change in US gambling laws that currently block the payment processing side of online gambling sites from doing business. It’s a case of sink or swim and those land based casinos that don't move with the trend could end up losing out on a potentially huge new market.

The two gambling websites in this case are not actually operating any form of casino, but are affiliate sites that make commissions from supplying new members to online casinos by directing traffic to their websites. Interestingly, the stationcasino.org has now been put up for sale.