With states like Nevada and New Jersey recently passing legal online gambling legislation, sites like Poker Stars and 888 Poker are jockeying for a position in those burgeoning industries and fast. Sometimes at the challenge of land-based gambling establishments in those same markets.
In Nevada, home of the gambling capitol of the country, Las Vegas, the online gambling company 888 Holdings, parent of 888 Poker and other sister sites, just cleared a major hurdle to offering online poker to players inside the state with the recent recommendation for approval of its state interactive gaming license by the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
888 Holdings, based in Gibraltar, has stated intentions of working in cooperation with Caesar’s Entertainment Corp which runs, among other properties, Caesar’s Rio Casino.
Interestingly enough, that same land-based gambling giant, Caesar’s, is at the center of another story on the opposite end of the country, in New Jersey, home of the Las Vegas of the East Coast, Atlantic City. There Caesar’s Entertainment is in a heated battle with Poker Stars to dominate the burgeoning online poker market there.
Caesar’s actually approached Poker Stars about purchasing the Caesar’s Rio property in Las Vegas to help the site get a toehold in online poker in that market, but Poker Stars declined, setting the stage for an adversarial relationship in the effort to get a foothold in this other major online poker market. On behalf of Caesar’s, which is one of its clients, lobby group The American Gaming Association filed with the New Jersey Casino Control Commission and Division of Enforcement a brief expressing their opposition to the petition from Poker Stars for authorization to operate an interim intrastate online casino.