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The news that Cake Poker has managed to increase its market share by over 52 percent in 2008 should hardly come as little surprise.
Cake's success is fueled almost exclusively through its relationship with Sportsbook.com, by far the largest online sports betting site in terms of overall customer volume.
The Poker Players Alliance has long proclaimed poker as a "skill game", which is fine I suppose even though the British government has ruled otherwise (and they are among the most online gambling friendly nations in the world). The problem I have with the PPA is their insistence that sports betting is a more "seedy" form of gambling.
When it comes to skill, PPA President John Pappas might want to sit down with one of these successful sports handicappers and spend a few hours mulling over stats in an effort to determine which gambling activity incorporates a larger degree of skill. Following the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act in October 2006, professional sports bettor, Billy Walters, was prepared to walk into a court with decades worth of documentation showing the amount of skill required for sports betting.
But getting back to the sports betting poker relationship, online sportsbooks were among the first to implement poker rooms. They were essentially crap but the reality is sports bettors typically played in the poker room.
Cake Poker has done little marketing. Their business model relies almost exclusively on the business derived from Sportsbook.com. Seriously, how many Cake pros do you know compared to say Team PokerStars or Team Full Tilt Poker?
To further drive home the point that sports betting and poker work well together just like chocolate and peanut butter, one of the largest online poker firms - Everest - just announced they will be entering the sports betting market.
Everest' parent company, Giga Media, recently announced its plans to partner up with Victor Chandler International Group, one of the world's oldest and best-known online gambling companies, to launch Everest Bets. GigaMedia's Everest Poker is one of the world's most popular poker sites, and Victor's sports betting business already accepts more than 2 million sports betting calls per year in more than 160 countries, providing both companies significant cross-marketing benefits.
And the folks in Vegas - desperate for an injection to boost their ailing economy - are now in talks with various groups to enter the billion dollar online gambling industry. Their focus is not so much on poker but rather sports betting. The World Series of Poker helps drive the Vegas economy during July but from a purely betting standpoint, it's the Super Bowl and March Madness where casinos see tangible results.
This has been an editorial piece from Gambling911.com Publisher Christopher Costigan
