“The pulls and strains in the industry of Online Gambling”

Filing to make a public flotation on the London Stock Exchange, Party Gaming, the well-known Internet gambling site operates sites such as Starluck Casino, PartyPoker and PartyBingo. The London Stock Exchange could now possible witness one of the biggest public floating in its latest history.

The floatation is forecasted to value the Gibraltar-based PartyGaming between eight to eleven billion dollars, and plans to go public this June. PartyGaming would then evolve in the United Kingdom as one of the biggest publicly traded companies. PartyGaming shareholders will have about twenty three percent of the shares up for sale.

PartyPoker is tremendously popular among residents of the United States, and PartyGaming draws players to play on its online gambling site throughout the world. As the United States government firmly prohibits online gambling, the site’s popularity in the United States is in direct confrontation with policy. Within the United States and abroad its prohibition policy on online gambling is opposed. The small island state of Antigua, a short time back, began legal proceedings at the World Trade Organization, for prosecuting the United States in its dishonest commercial dealings. As the United States does not prohibit internal gambling concerns, Antigua claims that the United States policy in regard to Internet gambling is prejudiced. The United States in turn responded that in its strivings to maintain the morality and order of the public it is in its rights. The World Trade Organization’s primary ruling on the issue and its ensuing appeals decision enabled the United States stand on online gambling to remain not lucid and enabled both countries to state they had come out top with the ruling. The majority of people would claim that the call for online gambling and the dynamics of the industry is far too progressive to thwart its incredible expansion, though the two-sided interpretation of the ruling could awaken doubts regarding the destiny of the industry of online gambling. The United States must at some point in time definitely begin regulating online gambling businesses, claims the editor of Laws of Dot Com, Javad Heydary, a lawyer from Toronto, and in addition permit the companies, as in the United Kingdom, to run their affairs under stringent laws and terms, instead of simply and directly outlawing them.

PartyGaming’s financial outlook seems very optimistic. Its income in the year 2004 amounted to six hundred and one million dollars, almost five time as much as that in 2003. In the year 2004, three hundred and fifty million dollars were PartyGaming’s net revenue, in comparison to previous years this was a fourfold increase in earnings. And in the first three months of 2004, sales were almost double to the previous year, namely, two hundred and twenty two million dollars.

As far as the industry of online gambling is concerned, the situation generally appears very optimistic. The Internet gaming market will at minimum increase twofold in the coming five years, according to Christian Capital Advisors, a company specializing in gambling consultancy; and this growth will be expressed by a jump from this year’s eleven point nine billion dollars to the year 2010 when it will be twenty four billion dollars. This amazing growth is identical to the expansion which in previous years the classic e-commerce underwent.