According to a new report from CardPlayer, the potential profits that could be generated from a nationally regulated online poker industry in the United States could be far too lucrative for federal lawmakers to overlook.
According to a new interview with Dr. Kahlil Philander of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, who has researched the size of the U.S. online poker market, the massiveness of this potential market is impressive.
“My research has only been with online poker,” Dr. Philander says. “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.”
So what is Philander’s estimate on the size of the U.S. market if online poker was legal everywhere?
“If there was a national network,” he says, “my forecast was around $2.2 billion during the first year. That’s assuming there would be liquidity between all those players. If somehow Congress passed a bill or every state legalized it simultaneously on their own and had compacts.”
To read the interview with Dr. Philander in full, click here.
Join the Conversation