Harrah’s Hires Garber

The world’s largest land-based gaming company, Harrah’s Entertainment Incorporated, has hired the former Chief Executive Officer for leading online gaming operator PartyGaming, Mitch Garber, to oversee its Internet operations.

Harrah’s has annual revenues of around $10.8 billion and the appointment has set industry tongues wagging as to whether the American giant is planning to launch an online casino offering of its own or acquire an existing operation.

Garber will oversee a newly created division established to handle Harrah’s online and World Series Of Poker (WSOP) activities. His appintment has created some anxiety with current operators as they could soon face the prospect of competition from a large and well-financed land gambling company if the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) is overturned.

Gibraltar-based PartyGaming is the firm behind popular online poker domain PartyPoker.com and Garber became its Chief Executive Officer in 2006 before standing down last month. The Canadian joined from FireOne, a listed payment processing company for the online gaming industry, and is credited with restoring the operator’s fortunes after a large part of its core business was wiped out by UIGEA.

A lawyer, Garber also served as Executive Vice-President for Optimal Group, FireOne's Nasdaq-listed majority shareholder, and has experience with the industry going back to the 1990s when he developed the first gaming law practice in Canada for the Montreal-based firm Lazarus Charbonneau.

In November, Gary Loveman, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for Harrah's, stated that the prospects were ‘relatively good’ that online poker would be legalised in the US. In addition, he admitted that Harrah's had a strong interest in making online poker legal because of its ownership of the WSOP brand.

”This is something we're going to be working hard at and we think the world got easier on this one,” said Loveman.