Written by Thomas | Monday, January 24th, 2011

Virgin Gaming, the subsidiary of Richard Branson’s Virgin empire that’s based out of Toronto, has made a deal with popular video game giant EA Sports to allow customers who play online on their Xbox or PS3 the ability to wager and bet on the outcome of numerous types of online tournaments.

It works similarly to the business model of live poker tournaments being ran at local bars – while there may not be ACTUAL cash games or buyins to these events, the owners of the establishments put up prizes such as gift cards and free food to entice more people to show up and get more business in the long run for their pub or restaurant.  However, with Virgin’s model players can pay an entry fee ranging anywhere from $10 to $1,000 and collect jackpots for getting deeper and deeper into the tournaments they enter in.

Branson is cracking a pretty solid market with this mega deal, rumored to be worth countless millions in revenue in the first few years. While there are a great amount of online poker players, the numbers don’t lie when it comes to video gaming around the world – as more than 40,000,000 gamers are playing in competitions and other interactive events at all times of the day and night.

With popular live gaming experiences such as Xbox Live, players will not only be able to play as usual against their friends and other gamers from all over the earth, but now those same players will be able to enter online tournaments against the best of the best and earn great prizes and rewards from victories.

It’s gambling at it’s most interactive…wonder what the USA government’s reaction will be?  Should be interesting…

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