MSN Money: Online Gambling Could Take Zynga to the Next Level
This week it was revealed that Zynga’s monthly active user base had expanded to 292 million, up 24 percent from this time last year, while revenues climbed 32 percent year over year to $321 million. 
But the real future of Zynga could be tied into the legality of online gambling.
From MSN Money:
Until now, Zynga has been dependent primarily on virtual goods transactions and advertising for almost all of its revenue. Zynga launched its own cloud infrastructure -- Zynga Platform -- in March 2012. It will offer a complete gaming infrastructure to other game developers and enable them to leverage its massive reach and cloud platform to run its games and market them to its existing audience, charging a percentage cut of its revenues in return. This could generate sizable revenues for Zynga, going forward.
Another interesting space Zynga is looking at is online gambling. It is apparently in talks with Wynn and may launch online real-money gambling games in 2012. Since the average player spending in online games is much higher than in social games, this could significantly boost Zynga's revenue in coming years, if Zynga plays its cards right.
Gambling911.com notes that Zynga has been hemorrhaging $85 million over the same period, primarily a result of dramatically increased R&D expenses.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
