I don't see the big rooms going away. I'm guessing that we'll see lots of consolidation, Party, Stars, FTP, and Harrahs buying up everyone else. Maybe we'll have 3 or 4 big guys, plus MSN and Yahoo. As far as Yahoo goes, I'm not sure I'd expect too much from them even though they're tapping in right now. The current rooms not only have several legs up on MSN and Yahoo right now, but they have a giant system of free advertising already built with us. They aren't just going to dump that.
Harrahs has said many times that they want in - in a big way. Thay have the might to become a major player - especially by buying out other sites. With that said, the internet is in it's own world outside of b & m. You think Harrahs can stick signs in their casinos and expect million of players to sign up online? No way. They're still going to have to compete, and banner ads all over the place isn't good enough either. They need our reviews, they need our opinions to sell their sites, and they'll have to pay us to do it. They can pay for banner ads that don't convert and don't contain any information, or they can join us and have a fighting chance.
Personally, I think we'll see bigger bonuses, and more aggressive marketing across the board. All of these things are good for us.
It might be a good time to start buying shares of publicly traded rooms. If the market does open up again, stock prices will skyrocket. When rooms get bought out, stock prices for both, the buyer and sellers stocks will skyrocket. This market reminds me of the dotcom market about 10 years ago.
TheDonk
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