Internet
gambling is quickly rendering this piece
of ancient wisdom moot as it spreads
across the Far East, bringing with it
games that never end, rules that are
very much in flux and, for those who
would provide it to the masses, stakes
best suited to players with
near-bottomless pockets.
Operators of
gambling Web sites have long viewed Asia
as the promised land, believing that
widespread prohibitions there have
created a vast reservoir of pent-up
demand for their borderless product.
But
difficulties in moving money in and out
of many countries and a lack of reliable
telecommunications infrastructure and
ready access to the Internet by
potential customers prevented the market
from taking off in the late 1990s, when
the more-developed and affluent U.S. and
European arenas were growing rapidly.
A
daunting businessplace for the
uninitiated
Those problems still exist to some
extent, and Asia remains a daunting
place to do business for the
uninitiated, but those who have been
targeting the continent from the
beginning say the dynamic has changed
dramatically over the past several
years.
“The market is
huge, and I think everybody knows that
Asian players are the most sought after
… because they spend the most money and
are the most fervent gamblers,” said
Angela Ho, president of the DrHo888.com
Web site and daughter of Macau’s
legendary casino king, the 83-year-old
Dr. Stanley Ho.
Angela Ho said
the Costa Rica-based site, which couples
her father’s name with the tripled digit
that represents “wealth” in Chinese, has
recently seen monthly wagering increases
of up to 40 percent by the almost
exclusively Asian or Asian-speaking
clientele -- a rise she attributes both
to her father’s fame and reputation
throughout Asia and to the rapid growth
of the market. She said the site serves
gamblers throughout the Far East, but is
particularly popular with players in
China, Macau, Malaysia and Singapore.
In another
unmistakable sign that the market has
come of age, other operators who focused
on more-developed markets are now
joining the eastward Gold Rush by
creating new Web sites tailored to the
Asian player.
Simon Noble,
CEO of Antigua-based BetWWTS.com, said
the company rolled out new Chinese-
language pages in January, but noted
that business from the Asian market was
booming even without them, particularly
betting on European soccer and the NBA –
attributable to the popularity of
Houston Rockets star Yao Ming.
“Our numbers
from Asia are up almost 130 percent from
last year and it now makes up 30 percent
of our overall business,” he said.
Sebastian
Sinclair, a gaming analyst with
Christiansen Capital Advisors and a
leading tracker of the Internet gambling
sector, said his projections indicate
that the Asian markets accounted for 16
percent of a total Net betting market of
$5.6 billion in 2003 and will jump to 40
percent of a total market of $11.6
billion in 2006.
‘Growing faster than the U.S.’
“There is no question that
it’s now growing faster than the U.S.
and other established markets,” he said.
Many experts
say they eventually expect Asian nations
to constitute a majority of the market
for online gambling as betting using new
technologies such as wireless phones and
PDAs increases.
And while most
countries currently have no laws on the
books pertaining to Internet gambling,
the Web site operators are betting that
their offshore competition eventually
will force many jurisdictions to
legalize and regulate it, once they
realize that they can't effectively ban
it.
Such potential
has enticed a number of interesting and
powerful players to pull up chairs at
the Internet gambling table – including
Stanley Ho,who held Macau’s casino
gambling monopoly for 40 years and now
is the highest-profile player in
land-based casino gambling to make a
major Internet play; respected British
bookmakers like Ladbrokes, Victor
Chandler and Coral; and, inscrutably,
the North Korean government, which is a
partner in a joint venture that offers
lottery tickets and other gambling games
over the Internet, mainly to South
Koreans.
The arrival of
widespread 24/7 betting on the Internet,
which coincides with plans to expand
land-based gambling in numerous Asian
countries, already is jolting economies
in the few jurisdictions that have
become reliant on betting revenue, as
well as raising concerns about the
social consequences.
Hardest hit in
the first phase of the Net betting
incursion has been Hong Kong, which has
attempted to fight back to protect its
legal gambling operations from the
depredations of offshore “robbers,” as
Hong Kong Jockey Club CEO Lawrence Wong
describes them.
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complete article at:
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