June 29, 2005

I love the personalized stamp idea. Thanks for sending it along. What other great have-it-your-way ideas can people identify?

Of course, 85 cents is a little dear for a 37-cent stamp, but what the heck. It's just so cool that they exist. My favorite stamp was the Nixon stamp that Hal Currey sent me on an envelope that had prison cell bars around his head so he was smiling at you from the slammer. Made me wonder why more people don't design envelopes to enhance the image of their stamps.

I'm a big fan of special stamps and am surprised at how lame the USPS website is when it comes to offering them. Check it out. It's almost July and they're still flogging Kwanza and Christmas images.

Calling a Spade a Spade

And, speaking of the government, I wish ours could make up its mind about how it feels about gaming. There's such a denial of consumer interest and demand...and such a wink-wink don't-ask-don't-tell attitude toward the gaming that does exist.....all of which leaves marketers in a confused state. And an atmosphere of confusion produces mushy marketing.

I sat next to the state gaming commissioner in Louisiana, and he told me how good gaming is for depressed economies. Well, if it's good for depressed economies, why isn't it just as good for robust ones? Or, conversely, if it is NOT good for robust economies, then it must not be good for depressed economies.

Two days ago, PartyGamingPLC went pubic on the London Stock Exchange. Basically, this is an online gaming company with $600 million in revenue and $350 million in profit last year. Yum!

The company's prospectus was not available in the U.S., because our Justice Department and many attorneys general say that online gaming is against the law in the United States.

Maybe so....although that's not really clear. But right now, Americans make up just under 90% of PartyGaming's business. (That's the wink-wink, don't-ask-don't-tell part.)

Mostly, this is online poker playing. Total revenue for all online poker companies was $92 million in 2002. You know what it was two years later? More than $1 billion!

You read that right. It increased more than ten fold in two years.

During the same two years, the average number of daily active players went from 1,297 to 77,094. It's now over 121,000!!

This is explosive.

It reminds me of prohibition. Try to outlaw something that people really want to do, and they'll do it anyway. But by pretending that either (1) it doesn't exist or (2) if we ignore it, maybe it'll seem not to exist has - in my opinion - left way too much money on the table.

And that money could be going to state lotteries, where participants could be contributing much more significantly to doing good works in their states. Instead it's going to the founders of PartyGaming and others in this booming business throughout the world.

Online lotteries exist. They just don't exist in this country, run by our states. So others are reaping the rewards. Many states only modestly and rather ashamedly promote their lotteries, rather than proudly saying what they are and how they benefit their states. Marketers' hands are tied by skittish politicians. So we end up with scraps going to education, and BUCKETS of money going to the PartyGamings of the world.

My point is that gaming is a monster business. About 40 states are already in it through their lotteries. Those lotteries contribute very significantly to those states' economies. But many of the states treat - and market - their lotteries so modestly, while the PartyGaming companies of the world are rocking and rolling BIG time...so, as a result, THEY get the money, instead of our states. Seems backwards to me...and a great, missed marketing opportunity.