Caesars Entertainment Corp., the largest owner of casinos in the U.S., will offer real-money online poker in Nevada starting Thursday, becoming the second operator to do so since the state legalized web gambling in February.
The game will be marketed under Caesars’ World Series of Poker brand, the Las Vegas-based company said Monday at a briefing. The announcement coincides with plans to raise as much as $1.18 billion by selling stock in Caesars Acquisition Co., an entity that will own a stake in the online gambling business, as well as casinos in Las Vegas and Baltimore.
Online gambling is projected to be a $7.4 billion business in the U.S. by 2017, according to researcher H2 Gaming Capital. Nevada will represent about $400 million of that. Caesars Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Gary Loveman has said he hopes to begin taking online bets in New Jersey later this year. New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware are the only states that have legalized online betting and are vetting would-be operators.
Ultimate Poker, a unit of Las Vegas-based Station Casinos LLC, was first to offer legal online betting in the U.S. In August, the company said it had dealt more than 10 million hands since the April debut in Nevada. Caesars rose 0.5% to $24.69 at 2:41 p.m. in New York. The stock has more than tripled this year.
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