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August 05, 2005
Tele-Vegas comes to the UK
Interactive Television (ITV) is an area of technology I try to occasionally cover here. ITV transforms the passive one way nature of television into a two-way, interactive medium. What is needed is an ITV application and consumer interest.
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Rupert Murdock’s BSkyB service definitely believes in that direction. In a presentation to financial analysts that followed BSkyB's financial results, CEO James Murdoch cast some light on the company's interactive TV product roadmap. Not surprisingly, it taps into the global craze for online gambling.
The company's SkyBet interactive wagering service will "pretty soon be our second-largest revenue line" he said. Therefore "obviously [it is] going to be a more relevant part of our business going forward."
SkyBet plans to take advantage of the pending liberalization of UK gaming laws which will result in casino-style gambling being permitted on interactive TV platforms (currently only fixed-odds betting games are allowed). They will launch Sky Vegas Live 2, a sister channel to its existing fixed-odds betting channel. Sky Vegas will "include more traditional gambling formats" such as "roulette, poker and other card-based games."
He displayed an image of a new poker application that Sky has developed for the channel.
"This is an interactive television application that works. We just have to get it out into the marketplace where you can play live poker in tournament-style formats with other Sky customers. If you look at the audiences for poker which have been growing a lot, and you look at the participation in it that's been growing a lot, and our ability to leverage this on a wide scale, given the number of customers we have, we really see a very exciting opportunity in the UK gaming and gambling marketplace."
If they are correct about this becoming their second largest revenue line, then Gamblers Anonymous had better start writing an ITV app, too.
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