Online Gaming with Ultimate Gaming Chairman Tom Breitling

Thanks for joining me for another edition of PowerTalk - I’m  your host Chris Versace, editor of the investment newsletter PowerTrend Profits. Joining me today to take you behind the scenes and in the know today is Tom Breitling, the co-founder and chairman of Ultimate Gaming. 

As you may have noticed over the last few years, gambling has grown from being only in Las Vegas, Nevada and Atlantic City, N.J to a number of other states -- Maryland, West Virginia, Connecticut and Pennsylvania to name a few. 

At the same time, technology has had a tremendous impact on our lives and has resulted in the increasing shift toward what I call an Always On, Always Connected Society. It’s hit certain industries hard  for example newspapers and The New York Times (NYT); classifieds, coupons and want ads all of which can be viewed with Monster.com, Groupon (GRPN) or on Valpak.com and more; we communicate less through postal mail and increasingly through email as well as other social media sites like Facebook (FB), Google’s (GOOG) Google + and more. 

Although it’s had its issues, gambling has not been immune to this transformation. While Congress banned online gaming in the U.S. in 2006, that changed recently as tax-hungry states like Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware relaxed the rules. Flash forward to this past April, UltimatePoker.com went live, becoming the first legal, real-money poker site in the U.S. Since then Caesars Entertainment Group said it plans to go live this summer with an online poker site in Nevada.

With more than 10 other states looking at online gaming, be it for poker or for “full blown casino gaming” that was approved in New Jersey, we wanted to get the skinny on the return of online gaming. That’s why I was very excited to talk with Tom - and if anyone should know about the intersection of the Internet and gaming, it’s Tom Breitling given his leadership at Travelscape.com and the Golden Nugget. In case you missed it, he sold both companies and made a ton of money.

How big can online gaming get? Morgan Stanley predicts U.S. online gambling will produce over $9 billion in revenue by the year 2020. That $9 billion figure is the same revenue generated by Las Vegas and Atlantic City markets combined.

As you’ll hear from Tom, this new path for online gaming can help spur not only jobs and taxes, but a number of technologies that make online gaming secure. Tom also shares an interesting perspective on the legislative environment and what it means for business, trust me you won’t want to miss it.