We’re not talking about great shopping deals at Thanksgiving in the United States. Online Gambling (and most notably online poker) had it’s own Black Friday in 2011 and that shook the industry to the core and possibly changed gambling in the US (and worldwide) for years to come.
At the start of the year, Poker Stars was sitting pretty a top the world as the most dominant poker site around. Full Tilt was the closest company to them, and although a fair ways off most poker players assumed that they were raking in a fair chunk of change. On April 15th 2011, the industry was struck with Black Friday as the once dominant companies were indicted by the US DOJ and effectively shut down from the US market (and worldwide for a few days). The industry was rattled and didn’t know where to turn for a few days. Other companies decided that it was time to leave the US market and avoid the risk of being prosecuted.
Poker Stars Survives
In the months following Black Friday, Poker Stars and Full Tilt took two different paths. Poker Stars righted the ship and started paying back US players. They were allowed to reopen to the rest of the world and play continued – it was handled so well that they continued to be the most dominant poker company in the world. It’s hard to believe that a federally indicted organization can continue to operate world wide without too much of a distraction. The likes of Party Poker must have been licking their chops at first, only to see marginal growth in the months that followed Black Friday.
Full Tilt Poker Disaster
Full Tilt Poker on the other hand was a disaster. They would have ‘updates’ about when players would be paid, but nothing materialized. Their once god like ambassador, Phil Ivey launched a lawsuit against the company (only to withdraw a month later). Full Tilt then went on to have their Alderney gambling license suspended which halted all play on their site, and eventually they lost the license. What came out from all of this was evidence of a horribly run business that in an effort to keep up with PokerStars was crediting players accounts with funds that they weren’t able to collect. The company didn’t have the cash on hand to cover balances and when the indictment came down and they were forced to pay out players, they were essentially broke. All that onlookers could say was What the Hell is Wrong With You?
Cereus Poker Network
Lost in all of this mess was the Cereus Network (Absolute Poker & Ultimate Bet) who were in the top 5 sites worldwide. Their business too was most US facing and due to the massive media attention that insane Full Tilt Poker situation was taking on, many people forgot about the Cereus Network and their issues. To date not all players have been paid out, but you’d be hard pressed to find any information about the situation.
Interesting enough, with the regulatory challenges for online gambling in the United States many insiders believe that poker is the closest to being regulated. It’s possible that this latest crackdown was done to clear the market for regulation and ease the competition on those who obtain a license (read, those that have been lobbying politicians for years to regulate).
