Online Poker Protesting May Highlight Few Shares (CRYP, GIGM, UBET)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 3, 1:57PM EDT · Published Oct 23, 6:43AM EDT

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We have noted several stocks in the past for online gambling repeals that would benefit if online gambling bans for U.S. citizens were lifted. Among these that trade in the U.S. are:

Cryptologic (NASDAQ:CRYP) is sort of the pure-play stock that traders would look at that trades in the U.S., although the former Canadian company moved overseas closer to its European client-base.
Taiwan’s online gaming software company that traders look to is GigaMedia Ltd. (NASDAQ:GIGM).
YouBet.com (NASDAQ:UBET) is one such company, although it too has had issues in the past.

The Poker Players Alliance is petitioning Capitol Hill this week to repeal part of the ban on online gambling, or at least for online poker. The alliance apparently represents 800,000 poker enthusiasts and is looking to get poker put in the same exemptions as online horse racing, lotteries, and fantasy sports. This follows a move by Congressman Barney Frank which we covered earlier this year, and his efforts are apparently gathering more support.

Interestingly enough, playing poker online is still done regularly and legally. But processing payments is the illegal part for U.S. citizens, and the laws currently allow the government to go after financial institutions that facilitate such payments if they process online gambling payments for U.S. citizens.

In the U.K., stocks like PartyGaming Plc and 888 Holdings Plc are two of the online gambling companies that would benefit from a repeal in online gambling for poker.

It is probably far too soon to make bets, no pun intended, on how this turns out. Even if the puritanical ban ends up getting repealed, it is not something that will happen overnight.

Jon C. Ogg
October 23, 2007

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.