More than a year after Lasseters of the Northern Territory launched the first Australian government-licensed online casino, competition Down Under has finally arrived. Both GoCorp's AusVegas portal and betting site and Federal Hotels' Wrest Point Casinos launched this week despite the Australian federal government's hurry to prevent additional interactive gaming licenses from being issued.
The AusVegas site (www.ausvegas.com.au), unlike Lasseters Online, is Australia's first online casino that didn't hatch from land-based beginnings. GoCorp received its online gaming license from Queensland in June 1999, and conducted a live test of the virtual casino on May 16, before the moratorium's effective date of May 19.
GoCorp's CEO Paul Appleby enthused, "This is a major milestone for GoCorp. It's taken some two years and an enormous amount of dedication, innovation and enthusiasm from our superb team at GoCorp to reach this point."
"Not only have we opened AusVegas for business, but we've done so ahead of schedule and on budget. But the opening of AusVegas in cyberspace is just the beginning," he continued.
"We plan to develop a range of themed cyber casinos. While AusVegas is one of our first, we've already built another cyber casino, Aussie Nugget, which is currently being tested by the regulatory authorities and is due to go live in the third quarter of this year."
The launch of AusVegas preempts GoCorp's IPO. The company will float Monday.
Federal Hotels received its interactive gaming license from Tasmania earlier this year, and has launched www.wrestpointcasino.com this week, with another site, www.countryclubcasino.com, scheduled to follow shortly.
Both GoCorp and Federal Hotels have software licensing agreements with GET Systems and Access. GoGorp's went live using Access games, but will eventually implement GET games as well. Federal's casino is powered by GET games. Access games will be added possibly as soon as next week.