Harrah's Entertainment
Looks to Online Gambling
 November
10 - Large American land casino groups have traditionally been
anti-online gambling because the popular Internet activity is
seen as unwanted competition, diverting hundreds of millions of
gambling dollars once earmarked for their coffers, but one
leading land casino group has changed its tune.
Harrah's Entertainment owns and operates many leading
land casinos all over the United States, including the famous
Caesars Palace, Flamingo, Paris and Bally's in Las Vegas,
Nevada, as well as Harrah's Resort in Atlantic City, Harrah's in
St. Louis Casino, Grand Biloxi in Mississippi and many more.
In a recent interview, Harrah's Entertainment CEO Gary
Loveman said he thinks the legalisation of online poker in the
United States is a strong possibility now, given the Democratic
victory in the recent presidential election, despite the Bush
administration's attempt to implement anti-online gambling
regulations.
'Even though the Bush administration is rushing to finalise
regulations designed to prevent payments to and from online
casinos, I believe the prospects of online poker being legalized
in America are pretty good. I don't believe that the incoming
Congressional leadership is that opposed to the legalisation of
online poker.
'This means that Harrah's could look at offering online poker as
a new and highly lucrative revenue stream, one which could
potentially generate hundreds of millions of dollars without
incurring the enormous capital expenditure that is traditionally
associated with setting up new land casinos,' he said.
Perhaps Loveman's new found interest in the legalisation of
online gambling is not that surprising given that the casino
group recently announced a net loss of $129.7 million for the
third quarter of the current financial year. This means that
Harrah's faces a nasty period of lay-offs and cost-cutting to
help ease its losses.
In 2007 Harrah's reported a $667.2 million profit in its first
three quarters. However, during the same period this year it has
reported staggering losses of $415.1 million. This means that
the company' shareholders will be eager to turn the slump
around, even if that means 'going over to the dark side' that is
online gambling.
It seems that due to America's economy currently being in a
slump, America's large land casinos are finding it increasingly
hard to fill their hotel rooms, and are thus more open to
lending their existing brands to new online gambling operations
that are relatively cheap to operate, and can be highly
lucrative.
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