California-based software developer CyberArts has thrown down the gauntlet to rival Gtech ahead of the possible legalisation of intrastate poker in California.

As reported on EGRmagazine.com earlier this month, CyberArts recently beat Gtech to the contract to provide French lottery operator Francaise des Jeux with their online poker product (more).

Speaking to eGaming Review today, CyberArts chairman Ken Arnold said: “We just beat them in France for the FDJ deal. We’re looking forward to competing again. They are our major strategic competitor.”

The challenge was in response to news from Jim Tabilio of Poker Voters of America, the lobby group working on a bill to legalise intrastate online poker with California stakeholders (more). Tabilio told eGaming Review this week that the contractual model the group is examining is the California lottery, which is run by Gtech parent company Lottomatica.

Tabilio told eGaming Review that “the political comfort level” among regulators and law enforcement in California is for a pooled liquidity network run by an experienced single operator with no history of US exposure.

Gtech has such experience via its roles as lottery provider for California and as poker provider for Swedish monopoly Svenska Spel via its Boss Media subsidiary. CyberArts is to gain such experience via its new deal with FDJ, and neither company is believed to have history of US exposure.

Tabilio said: “They want to be able to do their regulatory due diligence on a daily basis. Also, having someone operating in California who has had access to US customers at any point, and therefore has been operating, in the view of the Federal and California DOJ, outside of the law, would create problems for legislators and regulators.”

Tabilio added that suppliers who had taken bets from US citizens might have problems passing a ‘fit and proper test’ as part of the licensing process, although he emphasised this would come down to how regulators interpreted the language in the bill.

Source: eGaming Review

Vsit Hyperion for the best jobs in iGaming