\nLAS VEGAS (AP) \u2013 Ultimate Gaming\u2019s gamble on online poker in Nevada didn\u2019t pay off.<\/p>\n
\tAfter shutting down its operations in New Jersey, the company announced Friday that it had closed its Ultimate Poker online business in Nevada, too, citing trouble making a profit as long as online gambling is limited to a pool of players in single states, so far just three nationwide.<\/p>\n
\tThe company, owned by Las Vegas-based neighborhood casino-hotel company Station Casinos LLC, was the first to launch a legal online poker site in Nevada in early 2013.<\/p>\n
\tState regulators will be monitoring the closure to assure that all customers receive everything they\u2019re owed and the state gets its tax revenue, said A.G. Burnett, chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board.<\/p>\n
\tThe board approved the company\u2019s closure plan and will be working with officials on a close-of-business audit, he said.<\/p>\n
\tThe company didn\u2019t mention how many employees might be affected by the closure.<\/p>\n
\tUltimate Gaming chairman Tom Breitling said in a statement Friday that online poker revenue fell short of expectations. Operating the sites in just the three states where it\u2019s legal \u2013 Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware + made the business costly.<\/p>\n
\tPlayers in one state can only go head-to-head with other players also physically in that same state.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThese factors have combined to make the path to profitability very difficult and uncertain,\u201d Breitling said in the statement.<\/p>\n
\tDavid Schwartz, director of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas\u2019 Center for Gaming Research, said the closure was surprising considering the investment the company made to do business in Nevada. He said he didn\u2019t believe anyone who entered the marketplace expected that legal online poker would be limited to three states.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI think the future has got to be a bigger market than Nevada,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the big picture, Americans have shown they like playing poker online.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tA few unlicensed sites gained huge followings for years until what many professional players refer to as \u201cBlack Friday\u201d in 2011 when the federal government shut them down and seized player accounts.<\/p>\n
\tPlayers can still access unregulated poker sites based off-shore.<\/p>\n
\tSchwartz says it still behooves companies like Ultimate Gaming and other to play by the rules, \u201cbecause there\u2019s going to be consequences when they don\u2019t,\u201d he said<\/p>\n
\tUltimate Gaming was the first of three companies to offer legal online poker in Nevada starting in early 2013.<\/p>\n
\tReal Gaming from South Point Casino and the World Series of Poker via Caesars Entertainment remain.<\/p>\n
\tUltimate Gaming shut down its operations in New Jersey in September after it ended its agreement with Trump Taj Mahal which filed for bankruptcy. It didn\u2019t operate in Delaware.<\/p>\n
No replies were posted for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LAS VEGAS (AP) \u2013 Ultimate Gaming\u2019s gamble on online poker in Nevada didn\u2019t pay off. After shutting down its operations in New Jersey, the company announced Friday that it had closed its Ultimate Poker online business in Nevada, too, citing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}