Wireless I-gaming just around the corner ... ?
Sprint planning fun-only casino games
By Kevin Ferguson
LAS VEGAS SUN
Sprint PCS is adding a host of interactive games -- including play-for-fun roulette and craps -- to its wireless web network. Some say this is a step toward developing wireless, hand-held, casino-style gambling devices.
Sprint's move comes less than six months after Nokia, an international giant among mobile phone makers, made a separate entry into this area by staging a contest for creative techies to develop entertainment platforms for cell phones.
Alin Lin of Taiwan, the second place winner in Nokia's "WAP Hothouse Asia Pacific 2000" competition, developed a system for playing casino games on cell phones.
A Sprint PCS spokeswoman said its games-developing partner, Digital Bridges of Scotland, is working on games for pure entertainment purposes and is not entering the real gambling industry. The games will be available on all Internet-ready Sprint PCS phones.
"Since we've launched games on our cell phones last fall, we've seen tremendous uptake and it has become very popular with our customers, who are able to entertain themselves while waiting for a bus or sitting in an airport," Sprint PCS spokeswoman Suzanne Lammers said.
Kansas City, Mo.-based Sprint PCS, the wireless division of Sprint Corp., is the nation's fourth largest mobile phone carrier with about 11 million customers. It has a large presence in Las Vegas. The company doesn't release the number of customers it has regionally.
Lammers said Sprint PCS plans to launch these games within a month, along with other multi-player games, such as Tank Battle and Fight KO. They allow Sprint PCS customers to play head-to-head in real time with other cell phone users.
Internet gambling is illegal within U.S. borders, the U.S. Justice Department argues. But some industry observers expect that position to be softened if and when states pass their own laws legalizing some forms of Internet gambling.
Some casino operators, such as Harrah's Entertainment and MGM MIRAGE, have already launched or partnered with companies that operate online play-for-fun casino game sites. The casino operators use the sites to cross-market its properties.
Some industry observers view these developments as laying the foundation to tap into the Internet gambling market if and when cyber-betting laws are loosened in various states.
Nokia spokesman Keith Nowak said its Asian competition was an attempt to encourage people to increase the use of cell phones, noting it is not planning to implement the casino game in its service.
Nowak said the company does not have a position on Internet gambling via cell phones.
"It's basically a user's choice. What's being accessed from the cell phones is not up to us," Nowak said. "It's like an Internet service provider -- they can only control so much."
Digital Bridges spokesman John Grotland, who describes his three-year-old company as a developer and distributor of mobile entertainment, said the company's goal is to expand into making wireless web video games that allow cell phone users to compete with each other.
That may be its current goal, said Internet gambling analyst Sebastian Sinclair of Christiansen Capital Advisors, but "as (the Internet gambling) market continues to develop and these companies begin to see the big dollars (e-gambling) is generating, they may take a stronger look at it."
New York investment banking firm Bear Stearns & Co. estimates Internet gambling revenues generated $1.46 billion last year, a 37 percent increase from 1999.
Sinclair points out that British media giant BSkyB had the original intent to develop interactive TVs, but since Internet gambling has become legal in the United Kingdom, BSkyB also branched into cyber-betting.
"I don't think (BSkyB) originally intended to have that be its business driver, but after a while, you start to see which business drives the car," Sinclair said. "And now Internet gambling is a significant part of its interactive television revenue."
Grotland said Digital Bridges is not planning to expand into Internet gambling, but noted the company is not closed to the idea.
"Certainly if someone wanted to develop Internet gambling from cell phones, that could be done," Grotland said. "But at this point it's up to the carrier (i.e.- Sprint PCS) to decide if they want Internet gambling on its cell phones."
A Sprint PCS news release announcing its partnership with Digital Bridges notes that the casino-style games will be coming to its Internet-ready phones, but adds "these games are strictly for entertainment and involve no gambling."
Sinclair notes that that is a common disclaimer.
"(It's) often accompanied by time-related phrases, like 'for now,' suggesting the service could turn into a gambling site if and when the legal environment is loosened," Sinclair said, noting that MGM Mirage's wagerworks.com play-for-fun casino site has a similar disclaimer. |
