Online Casino, casinos

Nothing is going well in the Monaco casinos which are seeing their gross income fall due to the economic crisis but also due to the fact that the casinos have been non-smoking since the first of November 2008. The Société des Bains de Mer (SBM) announced that the net result of its casinos  retracted by 28% compared to last year. The SBM is suffering from the full effect of the economic crisis but the smoking ban carries a large part of the responsibility for the bad results. In fact for major players it is inconceivable to play a casino game without smoking a Havana or a cigarette. Besides, Guy Benhamou, director of the Partouche casino, the Pharoah and Laurent Lassiaz, President of the directors of Joagroupe, said to us in interviews that the smoking ban had contributed to the deserting of their casinos by major players or that they spent less time there. For the Monaco casinos such as the Monte Carlo Casino, the major players represent an important part of the gross product from games and these anti-smoking measures don't help matters particularly in a time of economic crisis.   

The internet, a saviour?

The SBM has acquired a 50% share in Mangas Gaming belonging to the ex-director of Endemol, Stephane Courbit. To do that , the SBM took out its cheque book and paid the sum of 70 million euros to have a foot in the world of virtual gaming. The SBM is therefore directing many online gaming sites including Betclic, Expekt or Bet-at-Home. These sites are more aimed at sports betting although they do offer online casino games or poker. Mangas Gaming has all the good points necessary to figure among the top 3 in Europe and plans to take over other online gaming companies to reign supreme. Even more so since in a few months, France is going to open up its internet gaming market and Mangas Gaming will ask the Regulatory Authority for Online Gaming (ARJEL) for a French gaming licence in order to offer its services to French internet users. As we already dealt with in an article entitled “Online Gaming:Counters to Zero or Not?”, one of the clauses necessary to benefit from the French licence granted by the ARJEL is to return players' counters to zero. This point causes problems due to the fact that Unibet and other sites in the group have built up a large base of players over the years and it's impossible to start off at zero again so that all the online gaming sites start off from the same point.

For the SBM the internet offers a breath of fresh air especially in a time of economic crisis. In fact online gaming could be a way to overcome losses in actual casinos notably due to the fact that the sites have a good reputation in Europe. Betclic should be seen in France in particular thanks to the sponsorship which links it to the Olympique Lyonnais (OL) football club. The OL only wears the Betclic colours when it plays in foreign countries notably for the Champions League but not yet in France due to the fact that the legislation is awaited in 2010 and not before then. Expekt and Bet-at Home are in dominant positions especially in Scandinavia. Mangas Gaming doesn't plan on stopping there and is to buy still other sites to limit competition and to conquer more of the market. As for knowing if the major players who used to frequent the Monaco casinos are going to turn to the SBM online casinos to smoke in front of their screens and to play casino games, that's another story. To be continued...

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