Bwin.Party Aims at the USA

Bwin.Party has come to an agreement with MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming. It is only a regulation that is missing for them to be able to hit the US market.

Online poker market money list runner-up Bwin.Party has recently announced that they had made a deal with US land-based casino giant MGM Resorts International as well as with another casino- and hotel market player, Boyd Gaming. The agreement basically paves the company’s way to the to-be-legalized online poker market in the USA, which is to come soon, hopefully.

Bwin.Party is the majority owner in the new enterprise with 65%, while MGM owns 25% and Boyd has the remaining 10%. MGM CEO Jim Murren stated that they intended to be ready for the regulation of the online poker market in the USA and that they had been in negotiations with Bwin for some time so that their brick-and-mortar casinos, like the Bellagio, the MGM Grand or the Mandalay Bay, could hit the online market using Bwin’s software.

“It's such a shadowy, amorphous market today. We do know that millions of Americans are gambling online, we do know that they're gambling billions of dollars, we know that the U.S. government is deriving no benefit from this, no job creation, no tax revenue, and we know that many are at risk,” Murren said, adding that more and more people realize that this situation needs to be changed.

The Bellagio

As far as online poker in the US is concerned, PokerStars has recently announced that it had frozen several accounts lately that were used by US citizens playing real money games. These players managed to make PokerStars’ software recognize their IP addresses as if those were not US-based. The room is currently negotiating with the US Department of Justice regarding the fate of the frozen accounts, among which that of a player going for the SuperNova Elite can also be found.