founded 1998 headquarters cura ao products sportsbook casino owner pinnacle sports worldwide website http www.pinnacle.com pinnacle formerly known as pinnacle sports is an online gaming website that was founded in 1998 and is operated by pinnacle sports worldwide . since its inception pinnacle has become one of the world s largest fully licensed online sportsbooks . pinnacle sports rebranded to pinnacle on june 1 2016 1 after acquiring the www.pinnacle.com domain from avnet a fortune 500 company . 2 presently the company has customers in over 100 countries and is available in 19 including international english different languages . while most of the company information including number of employees and gross revenues are kept private michael konik author of the smart money believes it would not be out of line to guess that their pinnacle sports annual handle is in the billions of dollars . 3 pinnacle headquarters are located on the island of cura ao of the kingdom of the netherlands and the group is fully licensed and regulated by the government of the netherlands antilles license number 8048 jaz2013 013 4 which also functions as the regulating body for the gaming industry . on march 19 2015 pinnacle announced the award of a class ii remote maltese gaming licence 5 mga cl2 1069 2015 for the provision of sports betting . regulation requires that pinnacle must maintain sufficient funds to be able to honour the winnings of their customers at all times . contents 1 reduced margin pricing 2 casino 3 poker 4 esports 5 exit from us market 6 notes reduced margin pricing edit when pinnacle began trading in 1998 most gaming companies used bonuses to lure potential customers . rather than offer sign up or reload bonuses pinnacle became the first sportsbook to introduce a reduced margin pricing model or reduced juice thus deriving profit from lower margins but a far higher turnover . pinnacle began offering 105 104 1.95 1.96 prices on head to head match odds and spreads significantly undercutting the standard 110 1.91 pricing model that was used by its competitors . pinnacle is able to operate under this pricing model by posting opening overnight lines with smaller limits . this allows pinnacle to shape their lines according to the betting activity of sharp bettors without exposing the book . these early low limit bets ultimately allow pinnacle to offer betting limits with confidence as high as 50 000 or more on selected games with their low margin pricing model . casino edit although pinnacle is best known for its sports betting service pinnacle has also operated an online casino since september 2004 . the site offers the following casino games in cash high stakes cash and a free play format blackjack baccarat craps roulette pontoon video poker pai gow poker stud poker oasis poker hold em poker three card stud poker single line slots multi line slots progressive slots keno poker edit in august 2008 pinnacle entered the online poker realm in hopes of taking advantage of the online poker phenomenon . pinnacle s poker room was run and operated by entraction software . the same poker network is used by other online gaming websites such as betdaq i4poker and redbet . 6 in june 2011 entraction informed pinnacle that due to changes in eu gaming regulation their cura ao license was no longer accepted . pinnacle closed their poker room on 13 june 2011 stating the steps required to remain within the entraction network will necessitate a significant commitment for pinnacle poker . given that our current focus is on developing our leading sportsbook and casino products we have decided not to pursue the necessary changes . 7 esports edit in 2010 pinnacle was one of the first global bookmakers to offer odds on esports . what began initially as an experiment quickly turned into a major market which has doubled in size for four consecutive years 2010 to 2014 . according to pinnacle esports is now the 7th largest market for them in terms of volume exceeding regular sports like golf and rugby . pinnacle reached the historic milestone of a total of one million esport bets in december 2014 . 8 exit from us market edit on january 11 2007 in what was considered a controversial move pinnacle voluntarily announced that it would no longer accept wagers from customers based in the united states in accordance with the unlawful internet gambling enforcement act of 2006 which was passed on september 30 2006 . the law which was a last minute addition to security and accountability for every port act stipulates that participants in designated payment systems to establish policies and procedures reasonably designed to identify and block or otherwise prevent or prohibit transactions in connection with unlawful internet gambling . 9 at the time pinnacle sports posted the following message to their u.s. based customers after careful consideration pinnacle sports has chosen to voluntarily exit the u.s. market . accordingly wagers will no longer be accepted from clients within the u.s. as of thursday january 11 2007 . at the time of the announcement nearly 60 65 % of pinnacle s customers were based in the united states . 10 passage of the legislation led pinnacle to have problems with transactions involving us banks . 11 shortly after the decision an executive at pinnacle was quoted as saying when the u.s. focuses on something and says enough and when they go to war no individual company can possibly win in a fight of this nature . the executive also reportedly said that since the internet gambling bill went into effect we have lost the ability to do business with many quality banks . after the decision pinnacle teamed up with world sports exchange wsex to offer their us based customers an alternative to their website . at customer s requests pinnacle willingly transferred all money left in us based accounts to new accounts at wsex . on december 19 2008 pinnacle ceased offering odds on north american horse racing . although no official reason was given it is believed this decision was made due to ongoing pressure from the u.s. government as well as a general decline in interest from their non us based customers . 12 update to statement regarding closure of british player accounts notes edit pinnacle.com pinnacle sports rebrands to pinnacle dotweekly.com pinnacle sports acquires pinnacle domain after pinnacle it s all downhill from here washingtonpost.com 17 january 2007 accessed 18 april 2009 . pinnacle sports review esports betting.pro www.pinnacle.com malta license press release entraction customers . pinnacle poker closed due to updates to eu poker regulation.eog.com july 20th 2011 wallstreetjournal.de pinnacle reaches million esport bets internet law implementation of the 2006 unlawful internet gambling enforcement act is coming ibls.com 8 october 2007 accessed 18 april 2009 . pinnacle sports stops accepting u.s. bets casinocitytimes.com 11 january 2007 accessed 18 april 2009 offshore gambling site stops taking u.s. bets bloodhorse.com 12 january 2007 accessed 18 april 2009 . pinnacle sports halts us horse racing service reviewed casinos.com 19 december 2008 accessed 19 april 2009 . retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title pinnacle sports & oldid 740331586 categories bookmakerspoker companiesgambling websitescompanies established in 1998companies of cura aosport in cura ao1998 establishments in the netherlands antilles navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages polski edit links this page was last 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