28-01-2006

Excellent Last Quarter Results for NETeller

The #1 online money transfer method for online casinos, NETeller, just published its last quarter figures. On a daily basis, NETeller is processing $4.1 million and approximately 3,200 new users register at NETeller a day.

Ron Martin, the just starting President and Chief Executive of NETeller, reported that NETeller is doing an outstanding job on the online money transfer market and the company showed an impressing growth in the fourth quarter. Martin stated that these positive results show just how strong the company is now, and how strong it will stay in the future.

The company, located at the Isle of Man, revealed highly optimistic fourth quarter numbers, showing an amazing number of new sign-ups and an incredible growth in revenues.

Every day, NETeller has daily transfers of approximately $4.1 million in the last three months only, compared to $2.3 million during the same three months in the year before. Compared to the previous quarter, NETeller had a 15% increase. In the third quarter, the number of online money transfers of NETeller was $3.64 million.

Looking at the entire year, the average daily transfers in 2005 for customers of NETeller were $3.4 million, which is a 90% increase compared to the average daily transfers the year before, $1.8 million.

NETeller had 2,320,670 registered customers at the end of 2005, which is a 86% increase compared to the 1,251,031 users that registered at the end of 2004. 

27-01-2006

Vegas Celebrates the Chinese New Year

This weekend, the Chinese New Year will start, introducing the Year of the Dog, celebrated with festivities all over the world. The Las Vegas casinos are already preparing for weeks for Chinese celebrations, by decorating their casinos in traditional Chinese style and organizing Chinese New Year's events. Reason for their efforts isn't their love for Chinese parties, but is the incredible amounts of money this will generate for their casinos.

According to Chinese traditions, the New Year is the best year to gamble and if one wins something by gambling, this means good luck for an entire year. To lure as many Chinese to Vegas as possible, most Vegas casinos had a Chinese makeover, covering themselves in Chinese good-luck charms and orange trees, cold coins, red lanterns and many other Chinese symbols of luck and richness.

This is not the first that Vegas is celebrating the Chinese New Year so enthusiastically, but every year they manage to make it bigger than the year before. In the beginning, all the activities were mostly focused on Chinese High Rollers, but now many middle-income Chinese travel to Vegas to celebrate the New Year here.

All the hotels in Vegas are already completely booked for the Chinese New Year, meaning that once again, the campaign has been successful. Many of the big casinos will organize special events during the week, including dragon dances and the traditional 'painting of the eye' lion ceremony.

25-01-2006

2005, Crown Year for Poker

Mostly due to the televised poker shows, playing poker in online casinos has become the hottest activity of 2005. Richard Segal, chief executive of one of the biggest online casinos, believes that the poker rage will continue in 2006, thanks to the improvement of poker software technology. 

Playing poker was mega popular in 2005, taking three huge online casinos flying high at the London stock market, generating revenues of approximately $2 billion. In 2005 special poker games, poker books and poker materials were on top of the Christmas-lists of millions of people all around the globe.

Segal states that the best thing about the poker madness is that there is no need to invent anything new, because all the products already existed. Poker games are already around for hundreds of years and all you have to do is put them into people's homes, through online poker rooms.

The largest part of Segal's revenue comes from the United States, approximately 80%, where online gambling is still considered an illegal activity. Therefore, Segal is planning to target more markets outside the US, starting by launching their games in 6 new currencies and 6 new languages. With these new options, he wants to be less dependent on the traffic of the United States. This way they want to become less dependent on traffic from the United States, mostly focusing his attention to Asia.

Segal is not completely confident in the Asian online gambling market right now, due to the problems with the regulatory environment, the low amount of broadband internet and internet fraud. He believes that Asia is more a medium-term project than a short-term one.    

Segal is now considering buying or starting up online casinos that offer sport wagering. He claims that he is not interested in any online casinos that take sports bets from the United States, but will consider opportunities from those from other countries.