John Schappert, the COO at Zynga has said that the company is very interested in introducing real money gambling.
According to the COO at Zynga, John Schappert, Zynga is “very interested” in online gambling. This statement was made during a conference call with analysts after posting its first quarterly earnings as a public company.
According to some observers, one of the recent opinions from the Justice Department in the U.S. may open the way for internet gambling in a number of states. As a result, there has been much speculation that Zynga would enter the world of online gambling, particularly with Zynga Poker and their forthcoming set of casino games.
It has also been reported recently that Zynga is seeking partners for online gambling, speculation was further fuelled by the recently acquisition of Double Down Interactive by the video poker company International Game Technology.
When asked about online gambling during the conference call Schappert said that he believes it to be a “very interesting opportunity, because we’re in a unique position.” Schappert pointed out that Zynga has the world’s biggest online poker game and the most social of all online poker games which Zynga has been successfully running for four years. Zynga produced incredible results last quarter and the poker game has remained one of the top six games on Facebook. Therefore, Schappert concluded, Zynga is “in a very good position and it’s a category that’s interesting to us.”
Over the last year Zynga has successfully increased its mobile user base to 15 million daily active users, this is five times more than a year ago. This will partly be due to the availability of Zynga’s games in seventeen different languages; a year ago there was only support for five.
However, before real money gambling comes to Zynga, all the legal issues regarding online gambling in the U.S. will have to be address so nothing is expected to happen in the immediate future.
