The monstrous social networking site Facebook could be motivated to push for legalized and regulated internet gambling in the United States. According to a Business Insider article published earlier this week, Facebook could reach $100 billion in revenue if it can dip into the internet gambling pool. Last year, the company only logged $4 billion in revenue, so it has a long way to go to reach 25 times that amount.Rationalizing the seemingly astronomical number, Business Insider quoted a source close to Facebook as saying, “Given the popularity of social gaming on Facebook's platform already, the insider figures that legalized online gambling (poker, etc.) will drive Facebook's revenue to the moon.” Facebook currently collects 30% of “virtual good” sales from companies like Zynga, which operates the wildly popular Zynga Poker, FarmVille, and Mafia Wars, just to name a few titles.
Business Insider added, “There would have to be a lot of gambling done through Facebook for the company to generate $100 billion in revenue. But given how nuts people are about gambling, and how powerful Facebook's social platform could be for this, gambling would likely be a big opportunity.”
In early December, PocketFives published a feature article about Facebook reportedly looking to enter the real money gaming arena in the United Kingdom. There, companies like Yahoo already have a real money online gaming presence.
At the time, an eGamingReview article pointed out, “The finer details of [Facebook’s real money online gaming] have yet to be discussed. This includes how revenues would be split between the platform and operators, how the age and identity verification process would work, which payment solutions Facebook would approve for real money play, and the speed in which launch phase operators, that do currently not have apps on Facebook, could create working real money applications on the platform.”
Facebook aside, Zynga could also see a dramatic boost in revenue from legalized online gaming. On Wednesday, Business Insider published a separate article contending that Zynga could capture up to $5 billion in revenue if it entered the real money gambling space. That figure comes from a study by J.P. Morgan and follows an article on AllThingsD.com published last week saying that Zynga was also potentially branching out into online gambling.A representative of Zynga told AllThingsD.com, “Zynga Poker is the world’s largest online poker game with more than seven million people playing every day and over 30 million each month. We know from listening to our players that there’s an interest in the real money gambling market. We’re in active conversations with potential partners to better understand and explore this new opportunity.” The news sent shares of Zynga’s stock climbing over 6.5%.
Zynga Poker currently operates a play money poker room on Facebook. Across all of its brands, Zynga boasts 232 million monthly active users and 60 million daily active users. Meanwhile, Facebook has over 800 million members spread across the globe, which represents about 12% of the world’s population.
Business Insider concluded, “Could online gambling make Facebook a $100 billion company? $100 billion is a lot. But it seems safe to say it could make Facebook a much, much bigger company.”
In a CNBC article published on Thursday, Facebook’s Sean Parker (pictured) asserted that if and when the company decides to go public with an IPO, it could be one of the largest of all-time: “To the extent that there is any bubble in technology at all, it is really a bubble around Facebook in the sense that there is a huge amount of pent-up demand among retail investors for access to Facebook equity.”Zynga is already publicly traded and held its IPO in December. Right now, you can find shares of “ZNGA” on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange trading around $9. Its IPO was originally set at $10, but shares of Zynga’s stock have never closed above that total.
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