Poker Snaps

An Ever-Changing Market

According to a recent report by the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, titled "The Business of Gambling," horse racing, the traditional working man's betting medium, is set to see a continued decline in market share, amid the rapidly expanding and diversifying world gambling market.



The blame is put on the growth of sports betting, the money put into the promotion of football, and – surprise, surprise – the phenomenon of poker.



Globally, despite severe restrictions in some potentially lucrative markets, including the United States and China, gambling is thriving. Between 1998 and 2004, the amount punters spent rose by 40 percent, to £131 billion.



The UK has ambitions to be the centre of the gambling world, and boasts the most firmly established and respected bookmaking companies. However, Britain is dwarfed by the giants of gambling, the United States and Japan, which, between them, account for 44 percent of the world market.



The British are big punters, but they do not bet as heavily as Australians, whose average incomes are similar. In Australia, lots of punters have become addicted to "pokie machines," and state governments have become addicted to the tax revenues they generate.



Similarly, the Chinese are often regarded as keen gamblers, but Hong Kong is only ninth in the table for annual losses per punter, with four Scandinavian countries above it. The UK is in 14th spot.



On average, punters in Australia and Singapore spend more on gambling than their counterparts in the UK, partly because the products they bet on have higher profit margins.



Despite its relatively liberal regulatory regime, the UK was a late entrant into the lottery field, traditionally the biggest gambling product in the world. Lotteries are big business – much bigger than horse racing and sports betting combined.



In the United States in 2003, lotteries yielded more than £11 billion in gross winnings. Japan has the second-biggest lottery, and lotteries are also big in mainland Europe, with Spain and Italy leading the way.



Online gambling is the fastest-growing medium and will continue to grow rapidly, but at the moment it accounts for less than 4 percent of total gambling.



The first online sportsbooks were launched from the Caribbean in 1995, followed by online casinos and lotteries in 1996. Online gambling has now overtaken telephone betting and is growing at almost 40 percent a year. By 2008, it is expected to be responsible for well over £10 billion in gross winnings, representing 6.5 percent of the total market.



At the moment, sports betting accounts for 45 percent of online gambling, with gaming responsible for 32 percent. It's expected, however, that both will be overtaken by online poker before 2008. That's quite an achievement, considering online poker didn't really kick off until PartyPoker launched its site in 2001.



The poker market, fuelled by jackpot-sized prizes, customer-friendly stakes, television coverage, celebrity involvement, and massive advertising, has exploded. Last year, it attracted 1.5 million online players, mainly from North America, and produced a gross profit of £0.8 billion, equal to 15 percent of all online gambling.



Finally, "The Business of Gambling" report predicts that by the end of this year, "the online poker market will be the first online gambling product to overtake its land-based equivalent." It forecasts that by 2008 there will be 7.7 million online players spending £3.3 billion, out of a total online market of £10.1 billion.



Ungar Book to Be Adapted for Film

Warner Brothers has acquired the screen rights to the book One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey 'The Kid' Ungar, the story of one of poker's biggest stars and its most tragic casualty.



News of the deal came through as the World Series of Poker got under way and the book, by Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson, hit the shops.



The Aviator producer Graham King will produce the feature adaptation, and he said: "With an estimated 50 million Americans now playing online poker, the commercial prospects for a poker picture seem strong, but Ungar's spectacularly dysfunctional personality was the reason Warner Brothers put its chips on the table to capture the book.



"I am always driven to bio pics about mad geniuses, and when I read about Stuey, I couldn't help but think about Howard Hughes. Put Hughes in the editing room, or in a competition, or with a woman, and he was the best. Otherwise, he was a lunatic. Stuey at a poker table was always on his game, but away from the table, he was lost."



In brief, for those who don't know the Ungar story, he possessed a genius IQ and a photographic memory, which enabled him to rise from obscurity to land back-to-back World Series of Poker crowns by his mid-20s.



He cashed an estimated $30 million in chips over his short career, but his self-destructive personality led him to run through that entire fortune, and he was penniless by the time he died of a drug overdose 18 months after capturing a third World Series title in 1997.



Private Poker Players

Coral Eurobet has been named as Britain's biggest private company in a Sunday Times report. Further evidence of Britain's betting boom came via the newspaper's Top Track 100 annual league table, in which Done Brothers Bookmakers (better known as Betfred) also featured prominently.



Another independent, Betfair, the world's biggest online betting exchange, posted underlying operating profits of £22.3 million for the year through April, a leap from £11.9 million a year earlier, with revenue up 61 percent at £66.7 million.



All three organisations operate a poker site and have announced their satisfaction at its growth, but all joined the poker market much later than traditional rivals, such as Ladbrokes and William Hill.



National Newspaper

The first new UK national newspaper in two decades is expected to be launched next spring.



The Sportsman – partly backed by Ben and his keen poker player brother Zac Goldsmith, along with Jeremy Deedes, the former chief executive of the Telegraph Group – will be the most ambitious national newspaper launch since The Independent was founded in 1986.



Aimed at the growing number of people who bet and play on the Internet, the paper is looking to tap into the surge in the British gaming industry, and will be published seven days a week, covering sport, the city, and politics.



Edited by the former Daily Telegraph journalist Charlie Methven, its launch date fits nicely with the betting bonanza that will be next year's World Cup, and will surely have some effect on the established industry daily, the Racing Post.



Interestingly, the Post reported its highest average monthly circulation in March, selling 93,531 copies daily.



Magazine Pullout
Similarly, Dennis Publishing, the company behind the best-selling lads' mag Maxim, and run by the wealthy magazine entrepreneur Felix Dennis, has unveiled plans for Total Gambler, which will be distributed free with Dennis' glossy magazines, including Maxim, Bizarre, Computer Shopper, and Men's Fitness.



Dennis has enjoyed success with its existing stand-alone gambling magazine, Inside Edge, launched in April 2004.



It's All About Timing
Was it not curious timing that the management of Binion's Casino announced that their old chips were officially worthless from Friday, July 8?



Surely, a date after July 16, when all of the World Series players and fans who had inadvertently taken home a chip or two from last year's tournament could have had a chance to cash them in during their WSOP main event visit, would have been more appropriate. Very strange timing, indeed.