November 25, 2006
Online Poker Playing Halved in October
Whatever you think
of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act’s (UIGEA)
medium-to-long run impacts, the short run effects are clear. WaPo’s
blog reports, “According to Nielsen/NetRatings, which tracks Web use, traffic to the top 10 Internet gambling sites dropped a staggering 56 percent in October” (via Iggy).
PartyPoker, which promptly banned US players, apparently dropped from
7.5 million unique users in September to 2.5 million in October.
In time, many players will likely turn to various work-arounds or switch to sites like FullTilt and PokerStars so long as
they accept US players. But the switching costs aren’t solely
responsible for the decrease in online poker playing. With online poker
and casino gambling booming before, sites like Party Poker were able to
liberally hand out bonuses to customers — free money just for signing
up or making a new deposit. These bonuses helped lure in new players or
bring back existing ones, and a larger playerbase meant they could
spread more games and increase the value of the site overall.
Given the current uncertainty,
I doubt these businesses can hand out large bonuses — at least, I
don’t see any sites providing bonuses comparable to PartyPoker’s past
offers. In the short run, that’s also going to hurt businesses’ ability
to bring in players.
See also: this interesting post at 2+2, also via Iggy.
Filed by Derek Slater at 2:27 pm under dtrStories
Comments Off on Online Poker Playing Halved in October