The Smurfit family-backed gaming company Gan, formerly known as GameAccountNetwork, has lined up yet another US casino to take on its simulated casino games products for the casino's website.

It is London-listed Gan's fourth new client win this year and its 12th such US deal overall. The company has started to make decent progress since Dermot Smurfit jnr, the chief executive, moved his young family from the UK to Las Vegas last summer. Simulated gaming deals with land casinos are all very well. But it is difficult to escape the feeling that all of this is just Gan treading water while it waits for the long-awaited opening up of real money online gambling across the US.

Gan has signed only one such arrangement, with Borgata in New Jersey, with which it also has a simulated gaming deal. If that partnership goes well, and more US states open up for online gambling, then Gan might finally start to make some decent headway. In the meantime, the glacial pace at which the US online gambling market is currently being opened up must be immensely frustrating for Smurfit jnr.

Investors, too, probably weren’t banking on such delays when they bought into Gan’s £75 million flotation in November, 2013. Yesterday, the Aim-listed company was worth just £21 million.

The regulatory environment is hardly Smurfit jnr’s fault, although one wonders whether Gan jumped too quickly into the US market when it wasn’t yet clear how long it would take for regulators to lighten up.

Smurfit jnr owns a stake of about 13 per cent, while the wider Smurfit family also controls a large minority stake in the company. At the time of the flotation, Smurfit jnr said he had been asked by older family members to help create a company to help secure the wealth of the younger generation into the future.

What are the odds now that he will accomplish that challenge?