PartyGaming is negotiating to band together with leading land-based casino companies, Boyd Gaming, Las Vegas Sands, MGM and Caesars in an effort to reintroduce itself to the American online gambling market.

Many international online companies were forced to retreat from competing in the American market with the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in 2006. PartyGaming was specifically targeted with a lawsuit in the State of Kentucky for providing its online games to players in that region.

Recent online gambling bills in states such as New Jersey will make it illegal for players to access gaming sites that are not based in Atlantic City. Efforts by American gaming associations to focus their energies on regulating and legalizing online gambling at the state level may force other states to adopt legislation similar to that of New Jersey.

In order to avoid violating federal gambling laws in the meantime, international companies may be forced to join forces with American land-based companies as the only way to legitimately re-enter the market.

Given that the U.S. online gambling market is cited as second only to the UK and estimated to be worth billions of dollars annually, this may be incentive enough for PartyGaming, the world’s major online gaming company, to join the club.

The online gambling industry has always been somewhat of a dark horse in the financial world. It has always had a bad reputation, thanks to a few shady companies that made that entire industry look bad. Now, thanks to online gambling regulation in several countries across the world, financial analysts are finally giving the online gambling industry the attention it deserves.

According to a recent report, financial investors believe that 2011 will be a good year for online gambling companies that are publicly listed, such as Bwin. This company’s recent merger with PartyGaming has also put the online gambling industry in a positive light for investors. The merger, expected to be worth $5.5 billion, is one of the biggest that the online gambling industry has ever seen.

Now, with companies worth exorbitant amounts of money, the online gambling industry is finally gaining some clout with the financial sector. Many online gambling operators have now decided to follow in the footsteps of companies like Bwin and PartyGamiing, hoping to earn attention from investors.

It is also expected that more online  gambling operators will begin going public in the new year. After seeing the immense success of Party Gaming and Bwin, it would come as no surprise.

For months, the online gambling industry was all talk about the potential merger between Bwin and PartyGaming, but it wasn’t until September that either of the companies confirmed the rumours. Now that industry professionals know the truth, however, both Bwin and PartyGaming are keeping their mouths shut about the details of the deal.

Many industry insiders have expressed concerns about this unusual silence. When things are going well for online gambling companies, there is usually a big deal made about the situation, but Bwin and Party Gaming’s secretiveness has caused professionals to believe that things are not going as planned.

However, Bwin and Party Gaming have released a statement that has confirmed that the merger is going smoothly and that everything is on track. The deal is expected to take several months to completely, simply because of the sheer size of both companies. It won’t be until 2011 that we will see a final product from the two companies.

The due date of early 2011 is not expected to be pushed back or delayed, spokespeople for Bwin and PartyGaming have stated that neither company foresees any difficulties in getting this job done.

It is no surprise that online gambling is a popular activity in the UK, one of the few countries that openly supports the industry. What is shocking, however, is that online casino market has seen a 40% increase in traffic in just one year.

A study conducted by Neilson has revealed that there were 3.2 million more visitors at various online gambling websites across the web. This tops popular social networking site Facebook, which only saw 2.2 million new visitors from 2009 to 2010.

The casino operator with the most growth was Camelot, which saw a stagger 114% increase in 2010, going from having a population of 4.4 million to 9.4 million in just one year. This is partially due to the fact that Camelot runs the UK’s national lottery. However, solely-online based companies like Party Gaming brought in almost 900 000 new visitors.

The online gambling industry can only go up from here. While it struggled during its inception, online gambling is now one of the internet’s most popular attractions.

What could possibly be the reason behind these two heavyweights merging a partnership? Well, how about the fact that the ban on online gambling in the United States has been lifted! It’s a very smart move for Austrian based Bwin to make, as UK based PartyGaming once ruled the U.S. online gambling market.

After the U.S. ban lift was announced, PartyGaming announced the next day that Bwin would become a partner.

The coupling of these two gambling giants has bookmarkers worried, as they each bring a lot to the table. Before the 2006 federal ban on online gambling in the United States was imposed, PartyGaming was ranked the number one online gambling company in the world. After the ban, many bookmarkers were forced out around the world, as well as PartyGaming.

The 2006 federal ban hit many online gambling operators hard, but hands down, PartyGaming was hit the hardest as 70% of their players resided in the United States. They went from ranking number one in the world to sliding down to fourth place.

Now that the ban has been lifted, PartyGaming will be able to come back in full swing and bounce back from their losses, and take back their number one title.

The publicly traded Party Gaming is happy to report that the first week in March showed some incredible rises in stock price as the stock climbed from an already nice number of $301 dollars to $321.90 dollars by the end of the week! Investors were happy to see this happening and said that the growth in the stock price had a direct relation to the numbers of success that were reported from the company earlier in the week that said Party Gaming as a whole had a strong finish in the last quarter of 2009 especially with regards to their Party Poker division.
 
The company is hoping that this continue into next week as everyone is happy when these type of results are displayed!
 
There are many reasons that the company as whole has reason to believe that they will continue growing. While online gambling continues to grow in popularity around the world, they are also happy to announce that the government law suit between the US and PartyGaming was concluded last year and they are free of the legal battle.
 
The company had also spent last year making some acquisitions into smaller online casinos that turned out to be a worthwhile investment and making a bigger name and brand presence for themselves. In turn this is all paying off and the online gambling company is on route for another great year.
 
The rise of this online casino gaming stock is bringing up the prices of other online casinos that trade on the London Stock exchange. It will be interesting to see what happens next week and if the trend in the rise of the prices continues!

There are many waiting the results that the financial report from Party Gaming will bring. The forecasters are waiting to hear from the financial officers of the company as reports of the final earnings are due out this week. It is rumoured that the company finished strong and so investors will be happy to hear the latest earnings and in turn will be lucky to watch their investments climb.
 
Of course there have been disappointments before so many are hesitant top up their holdings before they hear any news and some are even hedging their investments. Las year was a slower year for some online casino companies as many lost several hundreds of thousands of US based players due to several reasons such as laws by the government as well as the recession. The online casino industry does has some publicly traded members such as Party Gaming which actually the largest traded online casino on the London Stock Exchange.
 
It will be interesting to see what this year brings out in performance because it will also be an indicator for the next quarter to follow and party gaming is hoping to rise ahead of the competition and show their players and investors that they are the best in the industry be it to play at their online casino or poker room or to invest in the stock as part of your investment portfolio.
 
Stay tuned to our news sections as we will report the information once it is released and we will have our fingers crossed that the online gambling group had as good a year as some have hoped.