Poker News – Legalized online poker is slowly, but surely, coming to the United States. Right now, three states — Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware — have online poker up and running in their respective borders. More are expected in the near future (maybe none in 2014, though). While the poker boom, which started around a decade ago, has ended, the U.S. online poker market could be set for a comeback. Card Player had the chance to speak with Dr. Kahlil Philander of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, who has done research on the size of the U.S. online poker market, to talk about some of the things that could be in store.
Brian Pempus: Can you talk about some of the estimates of the U.S. online gambling market?
Kahlil Philander: Well, my research has only been with online poker. As for online gaming in general, my take is that there are a lot of numbers out there that are probably overly optimistic in general. And that’s probably pretty consistent with what we’ve seen come out of New Jersey, just as far as the end of November and full December numbers, which were the first real test of a population big enough to hold a reasonably-sized poker market and also a market that has online casino games and online slots. So, I mean that’s sort of a general perspective. But in terms of trying to benchmark online poker, in particular, and comparing it to where the market was previously, I certainly think that if there was widespread adoption of legal online poker the market would certainly be larger than the previous peak, which was sort of the post-UIGEA, but pre-Black Friday, era. If you go by PokerScout’s numbers, which are considered the best in the business…you could easily exceed that by quite a bit.
