In a video interview with the Financial Times’ Matt Garrahan over the weekend, Caesars Entertainment Chief Executive Officer Gary Loveman reaffirmed his company’s desire to see online poker completely legalized and regulated in the United States. Not only does he want to see it happen, he believes it will happen.
After answering some questions about the soured economy’s effect on Las Vegas and Caesars, the discussion turned to online poker. Loveman started by briefly pointing out that poker is widely considered a game of skill and not just chance, an important distinction that is apparently not lost on many members of Congress. He then lamented the plight of online poker, saying, “We’ve had in the United States this bizarre situation where it has been legal for Americans over (the age of) 21 to play poker online but illegal for American companies to provide that service. I can’t think of another example where there is something an American can buy but no American entity can provide. It’s a very unusual situation and that’s what we’ve been through for some time.”
With the Black Friday indictments of the principals of Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars, and Absolute, along with the resulting withdrawals of those and other poker rooms from the U.S. market, Loveman said that there is now an opportunity for companies like Caesars. Now that the major “illegal” offshore operators are gone, there is a “vacuum,” as he put it, for established American brick and mortar gaming firms to fill.
“I do believe there’s a will in Congress to correct this,” he said. “There’s a sense of inevitability that this ought to be something people should do and that we ought to clean up the regulatory and policing environment for it and that ‘s what we’re seeking.”
Aside from the obvious tax revenue windfall, Loveman cited two reasons why it legal online poker makes sense for Congress. First,it would create the regulatory and policing environment needed for the industry and the online gaming firms that would likely be licensed, such as Caesars, will be “known” to law enforcement authorities. And second, it would create thousands of jobs.
Loveman said that the feeling he gets is that the attitude in Congress is no longer skepticism regarding online poker, but more of a sense of inevitability. It is not if it will happen, it is now “when should it happen and under what circumstances.”
Caesars Entertainment, renamed from Harrah’s Entertainment in November 2010, is the largest gaming company in the world. Its brands include Harrah’s, Horseshoe, Caesars, and Bally’s, as well as Paris Las Vegas, Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino, Planet Hollywood Resort (Las Vegas), and the London Clubs Casinos in both Europe and Egypt. In 2006, the company was purchased by Hamlet Holdings, a joint venture of private equity firms Texas Pacific Group and Apollo Management, and was taken private by Hamlet in 2008. It had planned to launch an initial public offering in October 2010, but those plans have been put on hold. In the Financial Times interview, Loveman said that the company will likely go public at some point in the future.
