Asia Online Casino Struggle
3rd September, 2007
There is no geographical area that has tougher barriers of entry into the online casino industry than Asia. The online gambling industry started to develop from 1990’s and since then Asia’s legal and political obstacles have been made sure to be as hard as possible to overcome.
There is a number of boundaries that prevent operators from creating an online casino or an online poker site in Asia. Unfamiliarity with currencies that create complications in money transactions, different language causes problems with character translations and finally the general business manner variation between Eastern and Western countries. Operating in other countries, has always involved the culture differences that need to be taken into the account as one of the most essential issues. This is why there has been so many theories developed to help business with those issues, like Hofstede’s cultural dimensions or Hall’s high/low context culture theory. Despite the fact that we, as Westerners tend to consider Asian people in love with gambling and the potential big bonuses, that does not necessarily apply to online gambling.
There are some culturally motivated reasons for that. Japanese for instance have such busy lives that they simply do not have enough time to stay at home and sit in front of the blue screen betting. Apart from their busy lifestyles, they are also a very collectivist nation, which is why they like to socialize with their co-workers and friends when they leave the office. That is why their chosen way of gambling is in Pachinko parlours, which are usually situated by most offices to promote convenience for such occasions. Even if the Japanese decided to play some online poker on their lunch break in some nearby internet café, the fares in such places are extremely expensive and not everyone can afford it on a regular basis.
Even in Thailand, which liberal views seem to allow most controversial types of entertainment, the online gambling industry does not appear to be allowed at all. Here is what one Thai had to say on the matter: "The web pages of most online gambling sites are blocked by the government net filter, although if you bring the client install file with you on an ipod (or get someone to send it to you over MSN) then you can usually access the site. You cannot withdraw money from most poker sites from a Thai IP, although you can play on Party the last time I tried (1 year ago, it might be different now)."
It turns out that despite the fact that Asian people try to gamble, the game of poker as such is not even available at the casino, which is why most Asians have no idea how to play it. This is most certainly an opportunity but at the same time, if unsuccessful, it could cause a company that invested in the expanding into such market huge financial losses.
Nevertheless, there has been some predictions of online gambling industry expansion in the Asian land. One of those predictions was suggested by Marc Lesnick, who made an announcement in May on the conference in Amsterdam: “Look to Asia, that market will be opening up for online gambling real soon in a big way". Some industry experts were expressing their confidence in such predictions for just under 10 years now. This is why some companies have already started their research and preparation to try and achieve such difficult target. Calvin Ayre at Bodog admitted "we have someone working with us exclusively in Asia to get into that market".
Well, we shall wait and see if any of the brave ones are going to achieve success in the risky market of Asia. There can be no doubt that if they do, the rewards would be amazing. The first operator that manages to penetrate the market would set the trends and guidelines for other operators to come and also attain an amazing position of dominance and monopoly at least for some time in the start. How it goes after depends on the work of the operator itself.
