Just two months after poker firm PartyGaming, led by chief executive Richard Segal, made the London market's biggest flotation since the dotcom boom, valuing it at around £5bn, 888.com is ready to make the plunge too. According to sources, early next week, 888.com will attempt a seven million pound flotation in London on Thursday.

A successful flotation of 888.com, the world's largest Internet casino operator in terms of visitor numbers, would create a substantial windfall for the two Israeli families that control approximately ninety percent of the company. The Shaked brothers, Avi and Aharon, and the Ben-Yitzhak family own seventy and twenty percent of the company respectively. The Shaked family’s percentage is being held in a family trust.

888.com, which is based in Gibraltar, operates Casino-on-Net, Reef Club Casino and Pacific Poker and generates most of its revenues through its casino games such as blackjack and roulette. It is estimated that 888.com generates annual profits of around one hundred million pounds.

Casino-on-Net, operated by former Ladbrokes director, John Anderson, gives its customers a choice between playing at a private table, at a public table, or at a group table with up to two friends. Players are able to communicate with one another during the game using a “chat” box. Casino-on-Net has about twenty million registered members around the world.

In spite of very real concerns over the legality of online gambling in the United States, where most online gamblers reside, gaming stocks have been snapped up over the last couple of weeks and continue to be of serious interest to investors. Shares in PartyGaming, for example, have risen steadily since its initial flotation in June giving it a market value of approximately 6.7 billion pounds.

Empire Online is an example of another successful June flotation. Empire Online, a rival of PartyGaming, floated on the Alternative Investment Market at a value of just over five hundred million pounds.

In addition to concerns about the legal status of online gambling in the United States, some analysts are suggesting that the intensified competition within the online gambling industry may make stocks in online gambling companies less desirable. The intensified competition could weaken margins or turn the online gambling craze into a short-lived fad. Both of these possibilities could negatively affect the stock values of online gaming companies.