Hard Rock applies for Nevada licence
Investment bank-owned hotel-casino files application for online poker operator licence as two more companies join the list of applicants.
Brookfield Real Estate Financial (BREF), the owner of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, has filed an application to become an online poker operator in Nevada.
Global investment bank BREF, which acquired the operator’s Vegas business in March 2011, joins data centre provider Switch Communications Group and hotel-casino Treasure Island as the latest names on the growing list of applicants.
Hard Rock’s assets outside of Vegas are owned by the powerful Seminole Tribe and include more than a dozen hotels in four states, including six in Florida. The Vegas-based property was sold to BREF due to growing debts.
The company is known to have entered into talks with potential poker technology partners however no deal has been struck as yet.
Last week MGM Resorts became the latest operator to be awarded an operator’s licence in the Silver State, as legal real-money online poker draws closer.
One operator, South Point Poker, had hoped to be up and running by now, however the state’s stringent technology tests, administered by independent testing labs have put the brakes on those plans.