Anyone holding these? Evil K drove the price right down and now they seem to be recovering---are they worth considering now they seem to have sorted out their finances?

PartyGaming may suspend U.S. gaming business
Mon Oct 2, 2006 7:20 AM

LONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Online gaming group PartyGaming Plc said on Monday it would stop doing business with U.S. customers if legislation passed there aimed at preventing gambling over the Internet was signed into law.

"If the President signs the act into law, the company will suspend all real money gaming business with U.S. residents, and such suspension will continue indefinitely," it said in a statement.

"Any such suspension would also result in the group's financial performance falling significantly short of consensus forecasts for 2006 and 2007," it added.

Sportingbet warns on gaming ban, scraps merger
Mon Oct 2, 2006 7:29 AM

LONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Online gaming group Sportingbet Plc said on Monday it would scrap a planned merger and might stop doing business with U.S. customers after legislation was passed there aimed at preventing gambling over the Internet.

"Should Sportingbet's non-U.S. international banking partners determine that the act applied to them, then Sportingbet would no longer be able to take deposits from U.S. residents and this would have a material impact on the company's trading performance," it said in a statement.

"The boards of Sportingbet Plc and World Gaming Plc have discontinued any discussions with regard to a potential offer by Sportingbet for World Gaming," the two groups added.

SBT down 74% and falling !!!!!!

PRTY down 32% and falling !!!!!!

888 down 40% and falling !!!!!!

And also associated companies, Neteller, Empire etc down 50%.

but rising already!

peter do you still hold your shares?

GET OUT AND STAY OUT is my advice

This is very high risk now, with revenue flow due to be cut in half.
But, for the brave ones, you could have made 40% on this stock this morning!
888 looks a bit more secure, but Partygaming taken a bad hit.

JB

I read the news over the weekend and i could stop thinking about the legislation. This morning i sold out at 1.20. Took a massive loss!!

peter ... though that may have been painful, it was (imo) absolutely the right decision .... no recovery is likely within the immediate future if at all

hello peter, I am sorry to hear your news regarding your big loss. I was advised at 8.00 this morning not to sell my prty they were at .42p then. I have a financial advisor in London. I very nearly sold first thing, but for the phone call. I was told to sit tight, and wait to see how the market went. This was for my prty. I was told that if things started to look any worse, then I would get another call immediately. I did not get another phone call today. So I am still holding. I sold all my sbt on thursday. I did not buy them back. I still hold 80,000 prty. I have had an headache since I got up this morning. they have dropped 50k since friday close. This is as bad as when vog dropped .70p in one day not so long ago. I am not having much luck at the moment. I wish you luck with your future investments.

JB ..... well thank goodness you got out of SBT at least ..... with VOG I remain pretty sanguine and i think they'll come good .... PRTY i think i should decline to comment

peter I think you did excellent to get out of the shares at 1.20 that was at the height of the day. well done.

Just wondered, dont these online gamers deal with customers in SE Asia or China? Surely there would be more people there then just the US. Is there restriction in place as well?

r88ave..no restriction...people and the city just think the whole world revolves round Yankeeland...myself,i wouldn't go to that nazi shithole if you paid me

Maestro, the all thing is just pathetic its just got to be fixed!

NEED SOME POSITIVES FROM TODAY,IS THE PRICE GONNA BOUNCE TOMORROW,OR ARE WE GOING TO HAVE MORE HEADACHES LIKE TODAY.

well judging by IG's spread on LNG today 10p offer ,6p bid..they want to deter buyers...you'd think that company with all the milions they make would make a fairer spread than that...greedy gits!

I think I am right in saying that 50% of SBT revenue comes from the U.S.
I saw a report today that there is a risk that as PRTY is 85% dependent on the U.S. then the shares are almost classified as junk stock now that they have lost a huge part of their revenue source, sp down 60% & revenue yeild now calculated at 12.5%
SBT & 888 should survive, but I wouldn't be surprised if, now that supply now outstrips demand, that consolidation maybe on the cards. There may be too many internet gambling companies chasing too few customers.

Citywire. On-line gaming devastated as US plans to ban banks making payments

The signature of US president George Bush on a shock piece of legislation will effectively outlaw payments for on-line gaming and turn a booming industry into one of potential bust.

Big players like PartyGaming, Sportingbet and 888 Holdings have been rushed into issuing profit warnings and say they are likely to pull out of the US market which is where most of their income comes from.

All the shares were hit hard. Market leader PartyGaming saw its share price crash by over 60% before settling at 47.75p, down 59.375p or 55.49%.

On Saturday the US Congress approved The Safe Port Act which was passed to the House of Representatives and Senate which forwarded it to the White House for the president's signature which will make it law.

When passed, the act will simply make it illegal for banks and credit card companies to approve payments for on-line gambling sites.

Given that the US authorities have made their disapproval of on-line gaming clear with the arrest of Sportingbet chairman Peter Dicks in New York last month and BETonSports chief executive in Dallas in July, the president's signature is expected in the next two weeks.

Efforts to outlaw on-line gaming in the US have been getting nowhere fast. The Safe Port Act has caught the industry by surprise in that it doesn't outlaw on-line gaming, but prevents the participants from paying for it.

Provisions in the bill, in a section labelled the 'Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006', outlaw the processing of payments between US gamblers and on-line gaming companies.

Although the act makes unlawful the receipt by a gambling business of proceeds or money in connection with unlawful internet gambling, it does not clarify the definition of unlawful gambling.

But PartyGaming says that if the bill is signed it will be practically impossible for it to provide US residents with access to its real money poker and other real money gaming sites.

'If the President signs the act into law, PartyGaming will suspend all real money gaming business with US residents, and such suspension will continue indefinitely, subject to clarification of the interpretation and enforcement of US law and the impact on financial institutions of this and other related legislation' it says in a statement to the Stock Exchange.

Scott Longley, editor of Egaming Review said: Theres going to be no dead cat bounce on this one. This pussy is well and truly flattened'.

PartyGaming PR man John Shepherd shares Longleys pessimism: The measure outlaws the processing of payments between US customers and on-line gaming companies. It makes it practically impossible for us to provide any US resident with our real money online gaming service.

Sportingbet is more optimistic. It points out that its 'non-US international banking partners' will first have to determine whether the new act applies to them.

It also notes that the law explicitly exempts US gambling interests and it is seeking clarification as to the legality of this under US commitments to the World Trade General Agreement of Trade and Services.

But the stock market has assumed that the on-line gamblers will lose all their US revenues and has cut share prices by the percentage of business which comes from the USA.

Lumley reckons that PartyGaming will lose 60% of its business. He thinks 888, down from 146.5p to 95p, and Sportingbet, down from 184.25p to 79p, have similar percentage shares from the USA.

He says the percentage will be even higher for Leisure and Gaming, down more than two thirds from 38p to just 12p, and adds that World Gaming, down from 64p to 12.75p, is practically entirely US-based.

Of the larger on-line operators only Ladbrokes and William Hill have no US customers. William Hill shares were down 2p at 641.5p, while Ladbrokes was up 1.5p at 390.5p.

The big question now is whether other countries follow the US lead. And is there any sort of fight back in the US?

Longley claims that other European countries cant simply ban something which is perfectly legal in the UK, and says that EU law makes it hard to ban on-line gambling.

Both he and Shepherd claim that the Safe Port Act has been pushed through to protect US gambling monopolies including state lotteries, horse racing and Las Vegas.


Citywire verdict: Although the new act has caught the industry by surprise, the writing has been on the wall for sometime and the big players have been expanding outside the US as fast they as can.

As the US has always regulated gambling, the question has often been posed about how long it would allow a new bunch of web-based players near unlimited access to its wallets of its gambling addicted citizens?

The Safe Port Act doesn't outlaw gambling so much as they way it is paid for, so it will doubtless be challenged in the courts.

Although the moral standards may be duplicitous, given the strength of the Christian Right in the US and the countrys puritan past, it is difficult to imagine a successful legal challenge.