Rising Star Gaming is a private equity fund focused on acquiring and managing companies that provide gaming entertainment services on the internet. Whether it's online casino, poker, bingo or sports book sites, Rising Star Gaming is set on becoming a well diversified leader in the electronic gaming sector. Our mission is to harness the power of interactivity to make gaming more enjoyable and accessible to our customers and rewarding for our shareholders.
Rising Star Gaming is the online gaming industry's first equity gaming fund.There's no question about the rapid growth and unprecedented expansion of the global gaming market. The numbers speak for themselves.
Research firm Datamonitor forecasts that revenues from gambling will soar to $20.8 billion by 2016. The National Gambling Impact Study Commission, a congressionally chartered organization, estimated in 1997 that there were 6.9 million potential internet gamblers and revenue of $300 million. Today we smile at these numbers. The Baker Report was quoted as saying, "We believe our projections of Internet gambling revenues of US$100 to US$200 billion domestically and US$200 to US$400 billion in the rest of the world by 2015 is reasonable, even conservative.
" The internet gaming market in 2015 is still mostly dominated by a large number of smaller operators. There are a handful of giants and in their shadow there are hundreds of smaller companies. Majority of these firms are cash flow positive businesses, which have to fight daily battles against the changing regulatory environment, payment processing obstacles, licensing issues, increasing cost of advertising and the demand for research and development.
While the large operators are looking towards to the public financial markets to accomplish further growth objectives, the small to medium size operators are facing tough choices to stay afloat. The industry is entering a phase of consolidation.
We are ready to play our part in this consolidation period by obtaining interests in small to medium size gaming operations. We are actively seeking companies that have established traffic patterns, steady clientele and solid marketing deals that ensure future revenue stream. By building up a portfolio of gaming companies Rising Star Gaming aims to accomplish its aggressive growth strategy.
Our aim is to do an initial public offering of our investment grade portfolio by 2016 in London or Toronto.