PartyGaming Says U.S. Online Gambling Legislation to Fail

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000102&sid=a2Aw9xlXbA3g

PartyGaming Says U.S. Online Gambling Legislation to Fail

June 12 (Bloomberg) — PartyGaming Plc, the world’s biggest online poker operator, said proposed U.S. legislation to ban bank and credit card companies from allowing their customers to use accounts for online gambling is likely to fail.

“For the past eight years certain members of congress have tried to introduce proposals that would seek to prohibit U.S. citizens from wagering on the Internet” Edward Bridges, a spokesman for the company in London, told Bloomberg News in a telephone interview today. “In each case they have failed,” he said.

Arizona senator Jon Kyl, will introduce proposed legislation later this year, London’s Sunday Times reported today. Should the bill become law, PartyGaming would lose most of its clients in the U.S., the newspaper said.

Gibraltar-based PartyGaming claims to control about 55 percent of the global online poker market, which competitor Sportingbet Plc calculates to be worth $1.5 billion.

PartyGaming Chief Executive Richard Segal said the company will sell as much as 23 percent of its stock in London this month on a conference call June 2.

PartyGaming may be worth about $8.3 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations based on the company’s 2004 net income of $350.1 million and Bloomberg data showing a price-to-earnings ratio for Sportingbet of about 23.7 at the June 1 close. That would place PartyGaming in the U.K.’s benchmark FTSE 100 Index.

To contact the reporter on this story:
James Lumley in London at [email protected].
Last Updated: June 12, 2005 08:52 EDT