[DVaut1]

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Do not underestimate the cost of starting a new online gambling venture and actually get past the break-even point.

Not many would gamble at "Harrah's Online Casino", just because it was Harrah's.....so what?

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I don't think this is the case. Harrah's/MGM/Caesars/Wynn have huge brand awareness, and I don't think the costs of startup are all that prohibitive to these billion dollar mega corps. "Mirage", "Bellagio" and "Mandalay Bay" are known commodities to US consumers. "WSOP.com" or some variant from Harrah's could monopolize the market on WSOP satellites. The other American B&M companies could monopolize the online satellite market to their big B&M events.

The various internet gaming companies, IMO, are distrusted by a vast majority of Americans. How many of your personal friends, despite the fact they know how much money you make, continue to believe Party juices the flops or rigs the game in favor of their own bots? Federal sponsorship (in the form of legalization and regulation) would go a long way toward percieved legitimacy, but the American B&M companies have an enormous and inherent advantage here.

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What if you could essentially cut off 80% of your future competitors income, while at the same time become of one of very few servicing the industry (US)?

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A great plan. How does what the OP proposed get them there? Conceivably, the conspirators could just arrange it so that legalization and regulation via the federal government would only involve the established American B&M companies while prohibiting access to the established online gaming corporations like 888, Party, and Mansion.

Put differently: if Harrah's et al are going to influence Frist to do all this legislative maneuvering with the expectation online gaming will eventually be legalized and regulated (quite possibly years from now), why not just skip all that [censored] (and the months/years it may take to for that strategy to eventually materialize into a regulated market that they dominate), and why don't they just use their influence peddling to guarantee the federal government only grants them (and they alone) licenses right now? Since the conspiracy implies the American B&M gaming corps. have this kind of influence, why wait two or three years and go through all of this? They're passing up lots and lots of potential revenue right now by doing so, for something they can ostensibly only achieve years from now. How could they explain, if they have the kind of influence the OP implies -- how could they explain all these machinations to stockholders? Certainly the promise of increased revenue (in the distant future) is nice, but it pales in comparison to the promise of increased revenue in the current fiscal year. It defies reason as to why the gaming corps. would orchestrate such an outlandish conspiracy while refusing to take much easier action to accomplish the same ends.