Update: New Details on IGT Poker Network’s Departure from EU Market

More info has been provided this week by International Game Technology chief executive Patti Hart regarding the company’s withdrawal from the European online poker market.

She specified that a decision was made to shift the business from dot-com to dot-country, adding that “There’s less profitability and the product becomes less interesting.”

It is widely believed that the decision is owed to national regulatory changes in some countries in Europe that practically killed the business model by forbidding their residents to play with customers in other nations.

Hart also assessed that this should be a good lesson for the US, where the legalisation of online poker is developing at a state-by-state level rather than the federal level.

She added that companies planning to offer online poker in the U.S. will “have to look at their own economics. It’s much more challenged when it’s a single state.”

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