Online Casinos game provider Wager Works now IGT owned is an up-to-date article on Popular Online Casinos

Last Wednesday, land-based casinos machine provider International Game Technology (IGT) purchased for $90 million the San Francisco-based online casinos game provider Wager Works. Wager Works sells online casinos gaming content to several online casinos based in the British Isles, including to the World Poker Tour online casinos website, and a site owned by British tycoon Richard Branson's Virgin Group. Wager Works has also in the past provided online casinos game content for a short-lived online casinos experiment with the Mirage casino in Las Vegas.

The Wager Works transaction is expected to close sometime in August and will give IGT a leg-up on the competition should current policy in the United States change to allow online casinos to operate from U.S. soil. Current policy forbids the online casinos practice, though technically there are no federal laws on the subject and only a few states have specific laws banning the operation of online casinos sites from within their borders. The IGT-Wager Works online casinos game company transaction was announced before the stock market opened Wednesday. IGT shares closed at $27.98, up 69 cents, or 2.53 percent. For much of this year, IGT's stock prices have taken a beating, and the Wager Works purchase is expected to reduce by 2 cents IGT's earnings per share for 2005 and 2006.

Online casinos and gambling analyst Eric Hausler said the purchase should pose no threat to any current IGT land-based gaming licenses. While the deal will reduce earnings minimally in the short term, he said the transaction has long-term value which cannot be denied.

"We see this online casinos software providing deal between IGT and Wager Works more with longer-term accretive implications, although we see IGT more as a back-end supplier and content provider, than as a company interested in going into full time competition against its brick-and-mortar customers by providing content to online casinos."