Pala Interactive will not join New Jersey poker market yet

Pala Interactive has decided not to launch its poker platform for New Jersey yet. So far, PokerStars seems to be the only one that will finally make it to New Jersey’s online market. A recent interview with Pala Interactive CEO Jim Ryan, has revealed that the company wanted to launch PalaPoker.com the first quarter of 2015.

Pala Interactive has already opened the doors of its online casino PalaCasino.com, but the online poker room will have to wait as liquidity is the main issue: “The poker challenge is a bit deeper, especially on the back of a PokerStars entry. In that particular case, what we’re looking to do is optimize our product. We are going to go out there, do the best we can, but build a great poker product with the viewpoint that in a market like California where we do have a brand, where we do have a database, it is a far different set of circumstances and we think we can be a meaningful participant in the state of California. So it is about building for the future with the poker launch in New Jersey. The company had three very specific objectives for New Jersey. We wanted to expose ourselves to a regulatory process, positioning us not only for New Jersey but for other regulated US markets as they open up; to test their software, it is one thing to run that platform in a lab and it is a whole other thing to expose it to the marketplace. You have got to get out there, you have got to make your mistakes. We will try things and we will fail fast, if something works we will invest more, if something does not work, we will stop doing it. If we do those things well, we might just capture a meaningful share of the New Jersey marketplace. In New Jersey for the long term, it seems like the company is not really in the market to win. Well, we are new, so we will just see what happens. I feel like issues were not prioritized correctly, certain things got overruled that should not have been, and that the strategy was perhaps too grand. Throughout my time at Ultimate Poker, the goal was never to create a sustainable poker site that lived happily in Nevada and New Jersey, even though those were the only two states we could operate out of. The goal was always more rabid than that. We are going to set up in Nevada and learn some lessons. We are going to set up in New Jersey to learn some lessons so we’re ready to go in California.”