Poker Sites
Regulation
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There
is no standard ownership structure of the corporate parent companies of online poker card rooms. In some
cases, the poker aspect of the parent company amounts to more than 90% of the company's revenue. In other
cases poker contributes a much lower percentage. Likewise, stocks are not all listed on the same exchange.
The London Stock Exchange is where most of these companies are traded. Established more than two hundred
years ago, the LSE is an independent exchange but the NASDAQ exchange owns a more than a quarter of its
shares. Besides its "main market", the London Stock Exchange also operates a sub-market, the
Alternative Investments Market (AIM). The AIM allows smaller, less capitalized companies to float under less
regulatory scrutiny. About half of the companies listed on the London Exchange are on the AIM, including
some poker companies. More about the
London Stock Exchange.
The
Financial Times Stock Exchange (Footsie 100) index is a listing of the one hundred largest companies
on the London Exchange. The FTSE 100 includes British petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Rolls Royce Group,
British Airways and one online poker companies. More about FTSE.
The Vienna Stock Exchange also lists at least one online gaming company with a poker room.
Links at left grouped in couples of two, major cardrooms and their publicly traded parent companies. (The
exception is PokerStars which has not yet completed the IPO process so there is no parent public company
of a different name.)
Other companies that are publicly traded that have significant interests in the online poker market
include the UK sports betting giants Ladbrokes (part of the FTSE 100) and William Hill (part of the FTSE
2500). In addition the Cryptologic software company is traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, NASDAQ and
the London Exchange main market. The Boss Media software company is traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange,
and the NASDAQ-traded World Poker Tour has a small online poker room (that doesn't take US customers).
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