Yahoo Closes Its Online Poker Portal After Just One Month

Just one month after opening its Yahoo Poker, Yahoo Pool and Yahoo Bingo portals, the company has now announced the web sites will be closed for business as of December 31st. The decision not only seems very bizarre given the short space of time the sites were up and running for, but also considering the heavy amount of advertising Yahoo had been investing in the sites just a few weeks ago.
Offering an explanation behind the sudden move, Yahoo said that “changes in supporting technologies and increased security requirements for our Yahoo web pages [has led to the poker games being] incompatible, insecure, and no longer functioning correctly.”
One Month Ago
Just one month ago, Yahoo’s move into legalized poker was described as being ahead of the curve, and a natural progression considering it had already launched and successfully monetized its fantasy football webpage. Yahoo has even been selling targeted advertising on its fantasy football product, with its customers including Toyota, and had started advertising its own online poker game on its fantasy football webpage. Evidently, Yahoo considered there to be a significant overlap between its fantasy sports customers and poker players, and also seemed to enjoy the prospect of selling more web space to advertisers.
Preparing For Poker Legislation
Yahoo poker was a free to play website, meaning its portal complied with federal laws and the laws of most state. However, its product could easily be turned into a real-money site in the event legal online poker became widespread in the USA, and in the meantime Yahoo could even have considered applying for licenses to operate in the legalized states of Delaware, New Jersey and Nevada.
Possibility Of Poker Site In The Future
Giving another take on Yahoo’s decision to pull its poker website, PR Manger for Yahoo Games, Sean Hamel, said: “This decision is part of our efforts to streamline our product offerings and focus our energy and resources on developing for Yahoo’s core experiences.”
Nevertheless, Yahoo said it may still launch a new Texas Hold’em game in the future once increased security requirements were taken care of, and that if a new game was launched it would be free to play and “have boosts that can be purchased for additional upgrades such as with other popular games,”according to 4flush.com.