Net Bet Blog

The sixth annual European i-Gaming Congress and Expo is currently being held in Barcelona, Spain.

The great and the good are all there.

The following article from online-casinos.com provides an excellent overview of the events so far.

ONLINE GAMBLING INDUSTRY GATHERS IN BARCELONA

Numerous quoted companies are mentioned. Here are a few.

The first quote I have pulled out relates to the our recommended Poker room "PKR". Clicking the link below will demonstrate why we believe 3D poker via PKR is the fun future of poker. The link also provides rakeback as part of the Netbetblog promotion.

San [Jez San] revealed that the advent of the UIGEA dissuaded his company from offering services to US players when it launched. The 3D and content rich nature of the poker offering had ensured that it was encountering very little competition and growth had been spectacular, with the company breaking even in the first year.

San echoed Gigi Levy's comments on the importance of community, which he feels strengthens the product, adding that forums, avatars and more realistic and immersive 3D poker games were the way forward.

Martin made the understatement of the morning when he said that the past year had been unexpectedly unchallenging for Neteller and not much fun. The brand had been damaged and repair work was in progress he revealed.

Because of the unique and dangerous circumstances in which the company found itself in the issue with the US Department of Justice, it had been constrained in what it could do and say, and this had had an adverse effect on how it was perceived. However, the payouts to American players was largely completed, the negotiations completed and the company was moving forward with optimism and sound fundamental strengths.

There seemed to be general agreement that the Asian market presented unique problems, evidenced by the many less than successful attempts to penetrate it over the past three years. Martin remained optimistic of Neteller's efforts, although he commented that financial systems were still immature, and similar shortcomings were present in South America.

The keynote address was by 888 Holdings CEO Gigi Levy who opined that the phenomenal annual double digit growth of the industry and rapid technology developments meant that operators have hitherto been focused on the present instead of paying more attention to evolving trends that had been largely overlooked.

The Internet gambling industry had rightly been identified as the most successful of the online businesses to come out of the Internet, with good levels of expertise developed in marketing and technology, but there had been missed opportunities to capitalise early on trends that could have added even more impetus to development and business success.

A confident McIver [CEO Sportingbet] addressed the question of whether the industry could have had more impact in a lobbying sense if it had acted with more cohesion, pointing out that sometimes going it alone was more productive than management by committee initiatives. He emphasised the importance of fighting corruption in sport, and was upbeat on the results of the recent UK Gambling Commission study on Gambling Prevalence which showed that despite the huge growth in online gambling, problem gambling levels remained largely unchanged, contradicting the opinions often put forward by industry opponents that online gambling was a major cause for concern. He succinctly pointed out that in fact a principal area of concern on problem gambling had turned out to be the government's national lottery!

He nevertheless added that the results of the study should provide a powerful incentive for the industry to maintain its high level of achievement in keeping problem gambling under control going forward.