It’s about damn time. After years of fighting against PokerStars’ inclusion in the regulated United States online poker market, Caesars Entertainment finally relented last week and said it will no longer support “bad actor” clauses in internet gaming legislation. This week, the company took things a step further, announcing that it will be teaming up with PokerStars and its parent company, Amaya Gaming, to fight for the legalization of online gambling.
The relationship between Caesars and PokerStars has been a strange one. On the one hand, they clearly want the same thing, for online gambling to become legal in the United States (though Caesars was anti-online gambling several years ago, it is now probably the most vocal supporter of the cause in the land-based U.S. gaming industry). But on the other hand, Caesars has not wanted PokerStars to have a seat at the table, citing the fact that Stars continued to serve U.S. customers after the UIGEA was passed in late 2006. Really, though, Caesars and other U.S. companies just didn’t want the 800-pound gorilla of the world’s online gambling industry to come in and compete against them, as they knew PokerStars would likely win. It has been a weird situation where the two companies were in the camp on one gigantic issue, but at odds on another, closely related one.
But with Las Vegas Sands Corp. CEO Sheldon Adelson once again ramping up his efforts to get online gambling banned in the U.S., it looks like Caesars finally realized that it needed as much clout on its side as it could get. So, in a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” scenario, Caesars has not only decided that it is ok if PokerStars gains entry into the U.S. market, but that PokerStars should now be its greatest ally.
This week, Jan Jones Blackhurst, Executive Vice President of Governmental Relations at Caesars, told GamblingCompliance.com’s Chris Krafcik that the company needs to “…focus on where our opposition really lies, and clearly it’s not Amaya and PokerStars. They are a strong ally in the space.”
The union makes sense. Caesars has the name in the U.S. and some decent clout in political circles, while PokerStars has the money to spend. Though three states – New Jersey, Nevada, and Delaware – have legalized online gambling, it really has not amounted to all that much and no other legislation is moving along quickly (there are certainly states that are looking into regulating online gambling, they are just moving at a snail’s pace). The status quo in the political battle is not working very well for Caesars, so the company probably figured that at worst, a partnership with PokerStars will be neutral. Bringing PokerStars into the middle of the battle, though, could help speed things along both at the state and federal levels. If that serves to grow the market, everyone will be better for it. Even if PokerStars ends up dominating the U.S. online gambling industry, it’s better for Caesars to get a small piece of the pie than for there not to be a pie at all.
