bwin.party Up 30% in Early Trading on Monday
Published on April 18th, 2011 3:49 am EST
While many online poker players in the United States were trying to come to grips with the new post-"Black Friday" reality over the weekend, shareholders of companies such as bwin.party and 888 Holdings were preparing for a celebration. When the UIGEA was pushed through back in 2006, many online poker rooms made the decision to leave the US market. One such room was Party Poker, which was the largest online poker room in the world prior to vacating the US market.
The rooms that decided to remain in the US market, such as Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker, enjoyed an enormous advantage over those that decided to pull out of the US market. Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker grew like crazy from late 2006 to April of 2011, mainly due to the fact that they had the largest player bases (which was due to the fact that they were still accepting US players).
This competitive advantage came to a crushing halt on April 15th, 2011 (Black Friday), after rooms such as PS and FTP were accused by the US federal government of money laundering, bank fraud and illegal gambling offenses. Domain names were seized, arrest warrants were issued and the two largest online poker rooms in the world were suddenly on the defensive. PS and FTP subsequently announced that they would be pulling out of the US market, and suddenly there was a level playing field once again.
This is very good news to companies such as bwin.party and 888 Holdings, which will likely gain a great deal of market share in the weeks and months after "Black Friday". Party Poker, for one, is being very aggressive with player promotions, in addition to trumpeting the fact that they are safe, secure and able to quickly process deposits and withdrawals.
Let's see how some of the largest publicly traded online gambling firms are doing in early trading this morning:
bwin.party - Up 29.62%
888 Holdings - Up 14.39%
William Hill - Up 2.55%
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It will be interesting to see how these companies do in the weeks and months ahead, especially if Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker are able to stabilize their non-US operations.
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Filed Under: UIGEA
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