"While we expect expansion in the number of casinos, we do not foresee an explosion in new supply," Andrew Burnett, a Merrill Lynch analyst, said in a recent report.
That gives Semel unfavorable odds. With 8,000 customers, ukbetting is tiny, compared with the established players. In the 11 months ended May 31, ukbetting lost ?457,000 on revenue of ?7.4 million.
"It is a very tough market, and Eric will have a lot of competition," said Russell Foreman, chief executive of Aspinalls Online, founded by Damian Aspinall, part of a family that has a legacy of running casinos in Europe.
Semel said he took a chance on ukbetting because it was one of the few online companies that had not racked up huge losses in attracting customers during the Internet boom. Semel said he would use the ?5.5 million that ukbetting raised on Aug. 7 when it went public on the London stock market at price of 25 pence a share to transform it into a large digital wagering company that takes bets online, over mobile phones and through interactive television.
Semel is a bit of a gambler himself: he likes to shoot dice and bet on sports (his favorite team? Whichever carries his bet). But he also knows what it takes to succeed in the gambling business. "He observes and watches and plays his cards close to the vest," Wynn said.
And Semel is not easily discouraged. When he started with Wynn it was not in some cushy office job, but working nights on the casino floor.
"He put me through the paces," Semel said. "To see if I was really up for it."
Semel did the obligatory stints in surveillance and credit collections, until he was promoted to marketing director, responsible for pampering high rollers.
By then his fascination with Las Vegas had been cemented, having started more than a decade earlier. Like other teenagers growing up on the West Coast, for whom a visit to Vegas is often a right of passage, Semel made his first road trip at age 16, after he got his driver's license. He said his first glimpse of the lights arising from the desert blackness was "awe inspiring."
But the same time, he developed an interest in computers, buying an Atari video-game console with an acoustic modem before he had graduated from high school. He studied computer science at Tulane University, where the music scene, rich in jazz and funk, also captivated him. The Funky Meters, a popular New Orleans band, played at his wedding to Karen Davis, his college girlfriend.
After graduation, Semel shunned the movie business, he said, "because I didn't feel like I could be my own person," given his father's influence in Hollywood then. Even though Semel said his father eventually came to support his career choice, it took some convincing. He recalled his father's frosty "no" to suggestions that he could work in Las Vegas during school vacations.
When he thinks back on the other life he might have lived working for Morris, who is now chairman of Vivendi's Universal Music Group, Semel said he harbors no regrets. Semel said he knew from his first day at the Mirage that he had made the right choice.
"I was standing in the casino pits and I thought I was in heaven," Semel said. "My office had 12 craps tables, and action every night."
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