Yahoo! Enters the Online Poker Industry in the UK

April 26, 2007

Yahoo hase launched real money online poker on Yahoo.co.uk. Yahoo Poker has partnered with St. Minver Ltd., the white-label online gaming specialists from Gibraltar and join IPN, the International Poker Network owned and operated by Sweden’s Boss Media AB.

Today’s news may well mark a shift in the balance of power in the online gaming industry. Gaming Intelligence Group has reported in the past on the potential for one of the largest web portals to enter market, and their prospects remain good.

As one of the most recognisable brands in the world, with one of the biggest databases of online consumers, Yahoo is in a position to rapidly challenge the established online gaming companies.

Both PartyGaming and PokerStars have previously stated that the real competition starts when the first of the online giants enters the online poker industry, and the first out is Yahoo! We can only wait and see who follows, but the obvious names are E-bay, Google and Microsoft. For all three companies, the addition of online poker would be highly profitable and it would almost seem wrong if they did not consider it at some point in the near future.

Yahoo Poker’s customers will be joining the International Poker Network of Boss Media through their partner company St. Minver, which means that they will be facing mostly European players on the network.

The addition of Yahoo to IPN will be an extremely significant boost. With the potential to become the biggest European poker network, it will be interesting to follow the impact that this will have on Yahoo Poker, the International Poker Network and the online poker industry as a whole.

Considering the fact that Sportingbet’s Paradise Poker will migrate over to IPN in the next few months, we predict that the International Poker Network will soon be among the three biggest online poker networks in the world.

Six months on from the introduction of the UIGEA in the United States and on the day that Congressman Barney Frank announced his bill to regulate online gaming, this news marks another seismic event in the relatively short history of the online gaming industry.