Harrah’s Interactive Approaches Mobile Gaming Through Facebook
Though gambling laws in the United States make it difficult for a big-name Las Vegas casino to provide online casinos there, one of the biggest may have found an end around the problem and into mobile gaming: Facebook.
Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment has set it sights on some of the 400 million regulars at Facebook by teaming with social game development specialists Playdom to create and release a version of Harrah’s World Series of Poker game for the networking site. Playdom, creators of the popular Poker Palace already on Facebook, will also help create functionality for Harrah’s on MySpace and other networking websites.
Currently, the Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment WSOP brand has one other mobile poker game, the very popular Glu Mobile World Series of Poker Hold’em Legend.
World Series of Poker vice president Craig Abrahams promised that “We will immediately start to work on enhancing the [Harrah’s WSOP] game, bringing unique WSOP promotions and sweepstakes into the offering and ensuring that the battle for WSOP virtual championship bracelets can become a Facebook-friendly endeavor.”
Whether or not other such huge names will jump into mobile casino gaming in America remains to be seen, but Harrah’s seems fit to win on this one. After all, as Playdom vice president of business development pointed out, “There is only one brand in poker that stands out and that is the World Series of Poker.” Combining that with Facebook can hardly lose, can it?
