Caesars Entertainment:Internet Poker Italy

Casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corp. has decided to test the waters elsewhere by means of starting an internet poker site in Europe. Recently it concluded a contract with an Italian internet casino to promote internet and offline poker tournaments under the banner of its World Series of Poker brand.

The company that has its base in Las Vegas said that it came to terms with Microgame; this company operates and manages the biggest internet poker network in the newly controlled and legalized Italian market. However, the nature of the deal has not been made public as yet. “We can honestly say that we can take a lot of positive aspects from this deal on condition we execute it properly,” Seth Palansky, a spokesman with Caesars Interactive, said Wednesday.

The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union, paved the way to the Italian internet gambling market to accept foreign operators after a ruling in May.

Previous to Italy changing its legislation pertaining to online gambling in the country, the Italian Olympic Committee and the National Horse Breeders Enhancement Society were the only organizations which were permitted to organize sports betting and internet gambling.

“This European collusion will enable us to expand globally and to enter into join venture agreements with local internet poker sites and also to widen our WSOP brand,” mentioned Caesars Interactive CEO Mitch Garber. Garber is the ex chief executive officer of PartyGaming, an internet casino site established in 1997.

Microgame’s People’s Poker, is an established network that constitutes more than 120 internet casinos, will be co-branded making use of the WSOP brand and will be the driving force in the internet gambling hub of the Italian market.

Constituting part of the deal, the exclusive satellite provider for the WSOP in Italy is Microgame, a representative of the company said in a recent interview. Microgame for Italian players for the WSOP even in Las Vegas will also be the exclusive registration booking office.

Formerly known as Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment concluded agreements to launch three internet gambling sites in the United Kingdom. They are WSOP.com, caesarscasino.com and caesarsbingo.com.

“We do anticipate one more European Union market in 2011,” he said. “Our main prerogative is to expand and to ensure that the sites we operate generate millions of dollars in revenue, after all that’s why we have entered the UK market since it’s economic and political environment is very stable,” Polansky said.

Palansky also mentioned that the Nevada gaming regulators know that the company has several European partnerships. The company’s expansive ideas comes off the back of a bill to legalize internet poker in the U.S. championed by senator Harry Reid, D-Nev. Unfortunately his bill failed to be voted on in the Senate.

Palansky refused to talk about Reid’s bill or its laws. The Italian market is considered to be one of the largest and most profitable internet poker markets in the world according to the European Commission and Caesars endeavours to fully exploit this very lucrative market.