Zynga Moving Closer to Online Gambling - 02-16-12

February 16 - Zynga, the giant social networking gaming experts, are making no secret of their main objective - to move into the online gambling sphere as soon as significant changes in the US gambling legal landscape take place.

Chief Operations Officer for Zynga, John Schappert, when asked to comment on the group's first quarterly earnings as a public company, told analysts that online gambling was "very interesting" to the group.

"I think it's actually a very interesting opportunity because we're in a unique position," he said. "We have the world's largest online poker game and the most social online poker game we've been running for four years.  We had record results last quarter. And it's one of the top six games on Facebook. So I think we're in a good position and it's a category that's interesting to us."

Zynga has said in the past that it was seeking partners for online gambling ventures.  The group recently announced plans to create a series of casino games.

Legal issues still need to be hammered out before Zynga moves to online gambling services, however the industry has been given a shot of optimism with a recent Justice Department opinion that could open the way for internet gambling in a number of US states, and could even bring changes on a federal level eventually.

Zynga has 15 Million Daily Active Users

When Schappert says that Zynga was in a "good position" to enter the online gambling world, analysts believe that this is an understatement.  The group has a mobile user base of 15 million daily active users - a number which has grown five times over in a space of only year.

Zynga has also followed a policy of localization, with its games now available in 17 languages (up from five last year), and international revenue doubling year on year.

Zynga recently announced the launch of a new destination website, Project Z, which is now in beta format and will eventually be launched live.

"Project Z is a destination site for social gaming, we're trying to create a place for people to enjoy social games, to play together and always have and endless supply of friends," said Schappert.

It's now in an internal closed beta. We don't have a release date yet."