While the vast majority of the U.S. intrastate online poker headlines have revolved around Nevada and New Jersey, little discussed Delaware has had its own internet gambling industry up and running for a month now. According to a report on newsworks.org, state officials are pleased with how things have gone so far.
Delaware has three brick-and-mortar casinos – Delaware Park, Dover Downs and Harrington Raceway – which also serve as the online gambling operators. All link to the same client software (branded for each casino), which is provided by 888.
As of December 1st, about $3.8 million have been wagered on Delaware’s online sites; about 2,800 people have registered gaming accounts. Of course, these numbers are nothing compared to New Jersey’s or even Nevada’s results, but they weren’t expected to be.
“They’re not New Jersey-esque, but we’re operating with a different player base,” State Lottery Director Vernon Kirk told newsworks.org.
“It’s been going very well,” he added. “It seems encouraging, especially the ability to continually and steadily add new registrants, new depositors every day.”
Of course, Delaware’s size was a major concern once online gambling got started, as it ranks just 45th of the 50 states with under a million residents. Poker is a game that is reliant on traffic; while people can happily play casino games by themselves, they cannot play poker alone. Empty craps tables don’t discourage online gamblers from playing. Empty poker tables do. And it often becomes a vicious cycle – low poker traffic repels players, this reducing traffic further and causing more players to stay away.
Kirk said, though, that poker has been the most popular game so far, followed by blackjack. According to figures provided by PokerScout.com, 888 Delaware, which is comprised by the three Delaware casinos, has only mustered an average of 20 cash game players over the past seven days, making it one of the smallest networks in existence. Delaware is looking into forming compacts with New Jersey and Nevada in order increase its player base.
There have been some growing pains, as one might expect with a new online endeavor. Because credit card companies were scared off by the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), they have had trouble getting on board with Delware’s internet gambling, even though the law allows for credit card transactions. Only 20 percent of VISA transactions have been successful, while 80 percent of Mastercard transactions have gone through. Debit cards, on the other hand, have been successful almost every time.
Similar to what happened in the first couple weeks of internet poker in Nevada, Delaware did have some geolocation issues, as well. Some residents were unable to register accounts because the websites thought they were trying to play from out of state (only people within Delaware’s borders may play). It turned out that the bulk of the problems stemmed from internet traffic flowing through a Verizon hub in Philadelphia. This resulted in the casinos thinking many Verizon customers were in neighboring Pennsylvania. Kirk said that the problem has been address, saying, “We got together with our technology partners and Verizon and got that issue squared away. I don’t think there are IP issues at the moment.”
