As a result of Black Friday, it seems that calls for regulation at every level could not be louder than they are right now.
Speaking to iNTERGAMINGi yesterday, Hilly Ehrlich from BeatTheBubble.com, a global protection service for online poker tournaments, spoke about the effects that April 15 have had on the online gambling indsutry so far. "It’s affected it in so many ways, dramatically actually," said Ehrlich. "The biggest burning issue right now is for poker and none of us can understand how a company with such huge brand effort - they’ve spent millions developing their name and brand - can go for the best part of five weeks now without paying their players. This is something that reflects incredibly poorly on us all as an industry. It brings the credibility of online poker down to a level we haven’t seen ever before.
"It still makes us worry that players will look at this and say hang on, didn’t these guys bring us into the room and it was because of them that they signed up and not one of them has stood up and said anything about this situation? And yet you understand why they don’t; maybe their lawyers have told them not to say anything, we don’t know. But the fact is that the rumours are just getting out of hand now - it’s something like US$150m is outstanding to players since Black Friday. That’s got to be the single biggest issue."
Ehrlich believes that the poker sector is going to have to take stock because operators have got to regain the trust of players. "It’s all very well to say ‘oh, well, the Europe-facing rooms weren’t affected and they are actually on the up.’ It’s not necessarily true. I think the big winners would be the public companies - you know you’re going to get paid. But what is paramount to a poker player when he joins a poker room is ‘am I going to get paid?’ and ‘how fast is it going to be?’ Nothing else really counts. I don’t care what else you’ve got, I don’t care how good your software is, is my money safe? So that’s all this is about and I think there will be a couple of winners, but overall I think we’re taking a beating as an industry. Calls for regulation at every level could not be louder than they are today."
