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Taken from IGaming News….
Stephen
Yahoo Rumored to Be Planning Online Poker Room
A major new player could be emerging in the European I-gaming space.Less than two weeks after announcing a partnership with betting exchange Betfair, Yahoo is said to be planning an online poker room through its Yahoo UK & Ireland division. eGaming Review reports that the search engine site has begun to develop a free-play online poker site.
Yahoo has long distanced itself from online gambling. Last year the company announced it was severing ties with advertisers in the I-gaming business. The decision was seen as a result of a U.S. Department of Justice grand jury investigation in which subpoenas were handed out to print publications, TV stations, radio stations and portal sites like Yahoo that were accepting advertising from the online gaming industry. The media outlets were warned that they might be breaking the law by accepting I-gaming ads.
Officials from Yahoo’s California headquarters as well as the Yahoo UK & Ireland offices have been tight lipped about I-gaming ventures.
An insider who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Yahoo UK & Ireland is in a unique situation.
“On the one hand, they have to develop their business and they have this strong brand behind them,” the source said. “On the other hand, their parent company is trying to stay clear of all the legality issues in the U.S. that surround our industry. The problem, for them, is that in Europe and the U.K. some of the biggest growth markets for Web-based companies are in the gaming sector.”
Yahoo offers Texas Hold’em and other popular poker games through its free-play games channel and could determine to tweak its software to handle real-money play or enlist the partnership of an established poker supplier or network operator.
Either way, Yahoo would immediately become a major player in the marketplace. Yahoo controls 40 percent of the Internet traffic in the United Kingdom and would have the potential to bring liquidity and mass to an online poker venture that would rival today’s leading sites.
Yahoo UK and Betfair teamed up to form a branded betting exchange slated to launch on Yahoo UK by March. The new site, “Yahoo Betting,” will only be accessible to players in England, Ireland and other jurisdictions where online gambling is legal.
The new exchange will be built and managed by Betfair, customized for Yahoo users and promoted throughout the various channels of the Yahoo UK portal site. It will have multiple access points, among them the sports and finance sections.
One online poker software developer predicted that if Yahoo elects to develop a real money poker system in-house, the site probably wouldn’t be ready to launch until the latter part of this year, assuming research and development just started.
The Yahoo Games portal is already one of the most popular sites on the Internet for skill-based and arcade-style games. Yahoo has deals with leading skill-games providers like Midas Player and Worldwinner, which help populate the site with unique games.
If any company has the resources to fast-track a real-money online poker site it’s Yahoo. The company made a profit of $840 million in 2004, thanks in large part to a resurgence of Internet advertising. The company recently announced plans to increase the role of its Yahoo Media Group.
While Yahoo UK & Ireland operates as a separate entity, a move by a Yahoo subsidiary into the online poker space would signal the company’s acceptance of the online gambling industry.
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