Full Tilt Drops 'Poker' From Website Address

In 2013, Full Tilt Poker announced it would be expanding beyond poker into casino games and this year the site then added blackjack, roulette, as well as a number of single and multi-player casino gaming options to its range of online games. Now, Full Tilt Poker has taken a further step towards its goal of becoming a comprehensive gaming site, after dropping the word ‘poker’ from its website address, and as a Full Tilt representative told eGaming Review Magazine, this week:
“This year our gaming portfolio on Full Tilt expanded to offer a range of single and multi-player variations of casino games. Therefore, we have now moved the domain from FullTiltPoker.com and FullTiltPoker.eu to FullTilt.com and FullTilt.eu.”
The Rational Group, which owns both PokerStars and Full Tilt, recently announced Canadian firm Amaya Gaming was to acquire the group for $4.9 billion. Part of Amaya’s consideration was to introduce casino gambling and sports betting to the sites, a move which will enable the company to move beyond a global online poker market worth $4 billion, to include a global online casino market worth roughly $25 billion, but expected to almost double by 2018.
Full Tilt’s move into casino gaming is a necessary one, too, as The Rational Group attempts to gain access to the US igaming market, where it would be competing against such operators as 888 and PartyPoker with their own casino gambling platforms. In addition, global online poker traffic has continued to decline since Black-Friday, whilst in the USA’s nascent online gambling industry, online poker represents a mere fraction of total igaming revenues.
In New Jersey, for instance, the igaming industry has generated $63.05m in revenues since launching its first site in November 2013, with online casino revenues producing $46.37m in revenues, and online poker a mere $16.67m. One may then wonder why states such as Pennsylvania and California are considering just online poker legislation, with Sarah Coffey on ifrahonigaming.com, suggesting the following explanation:
“Some states considering poker-only legislation view it as a test run to see how the well the state can implement online gaming safely and responsibly before adding casino games to the mix.  Nevada and Pennsylvania have said that they see online poker as a potential first step into online gaming rather than a final one.  We believe that many poker-only states will find themselves adding casino games down the line when they see how much potential revenue they’re leaving on the table.”