blonde poker forum

Party have this morning announced their results. There are cautious noises going forward.

In the first half results are ok, except that yield per active player is falling and revenue growth is beginning to slow.

In effect what is happening is they are attracting more casual players, who play less frequently and then are not retained

According to Pokerpulse, Q3 over Q2 market growth in 2004 online poker was 26%. This year it is 4% ytd. Is this finally evidence of a plateau-ing in the online poker boom?

Party itself is having to change strategy in response to this slower market. It is cutting marketing expenditure and prioritisng customer retention

Several months after it's float, and with the shares having surged from 115 to 160p, investors are disappointed.The share price has fallen right back to float price this morning.

It is against this background that one should expect more consolidation activity.

THey were advertsising recently for someone to look at player retention - I didn't get an interview - so to hell with them  ;D

In the weeks leading up to their float Party seemed to do everything within their power to piss off existing customers who pretty much stopped playing there in favour of other skins.

First they stopped rakeback by freezing the accounts of all affiliates who were deemed guilty until proven innocent.

Secondly, and more recently, they tried to purge 'illegal software' use by randomly shutting down accounts while customer support sent out contradictory messages to a concerned user base (e.g. Pokertracker is illegal says one, Pokertracker is fine says another).

It is no surprise to me that they are seeing a stagnation in business, particularly with regard to 'yield per active player'.  They have driven away much of their 'hardcore' player base who can still access the same tables from other skins.

Personally, as a player, I think many of these issues are Party-specific.  It is unrealistic to expect the market to sustain growth rates >20% indefinitely and we've probably already reached saturation point with regard to TV and media exposure of the game.  Unless a substantial new market (e.g China) is tapped into at some stage I think growth levels <10% are far more likely.  The point is that the market is still growing.

Also, the 2005 World Series main event coverage is still to come.  This is undoubtedly the biggest event in terms of attracting new players and yet, as far as the non-poker playing audience is concerned, the outcome is still unknown.  Based on this I would expect to see a higher growth rate in the poker market during H2 compared to H1 as the TV coverage will undoubtedly provide some form of 'seasonality' to the market.

Sheriff

Sheriff, want a job?

 ;D :D :-*

I myself play on a Party skin, and tend to agree with your comments about the specific nature of Party's problems

As an aside, the cynic in me suggests that this piece of bad news is nicely timed with the impending floats of 888 and 32Red, and the impending battle for Empire. Not a bad thing to drive sector valuations down!!!

Tight End's latest post may be spot on.......

And the slow down in Party Poker growth was inevitable. If you give bad customer support & service long enough, eventually you will get your just rewards.

It is inevitable also that with any boom you will get newcomers who believe this is their ticket to riches and find out fairly quickly that it is not.  These are temporary players who distort the snap-shot figures.