blonde poker forum

"EGR" ("EGamingReview) today reported under the headline "Strong Q2 growth offsets Playtech poker decline"......

".....Playtech’s second quarter gross income climbed 2% on the previous quarter due to strong casino and bingo growth, compensating a 13% decline in poker revenue, the largest company on London’s AIM market announced this morning.

Gross income for the quarter totalled €44.5 million (£37m), up 34% on the same quarter the previous year, the Estonia-based online gaming software company said.

Total revenues were up 32% to €36.8m in Q2 last year, while poker revenue was down 13% to €7.3m. In a statement Playtech said this was due to “the seasonality effect” and the impact of the football World Cup......"

 

Ladbrokes, Party, & one or two others have already reported figures in line with that, in some cases far worse.

Party reported Q1 poker revenue (not traffic, revenue) down 11% on 2009, & a whopping 34% lower than Q1 2008. Laddies were equally poor as I recall.

No surprise there, the market is consolidating, & 'Stars & Tilt are getting the cake. Or are they?

 

The latest edition of "Inside Poker Business" (a Dennis Publishing mag, & streets ahead of any other Industry puff-guff) carries a fascinating article by Patrick Selin, who is the CE of Bodog. Under cover of a piece in which he tells how Online Rooms need to think outside the box if they are to survive, he reports on the peak numbers on 'Stars, Tilt, & Bodog, using "Pokerscout .com" as his source. These are "player numbers", not revenue, as revenue stats are not publically available for US facing sites.

Between January & May this year, the year on year decline (traffic, not revenue) was, if Pokerscout is correct.....

Stars - 11%

Tilt - 18%

Bodog (even according to Bodog) 19%.

All of which means at least two things.

1) The industry will consolidate still further.

2) Players should be better served.

Both Bodog & Betfair have floated the idea of a different Rake model recently.

3, or 5 years down the line? I think Stars will still be getting the biggest slice, probably Tilt, too. The rest will be scrapping for the crumbs, & developing niches & USP's.

More to do with the world cup and summer IMO.

Guess that is why the forum software tells you a new post has been made since you typed yours...!!!

I do believe that Party used the world cup and weather as their excuse for year on year decline in a recent release though.

Yes, ALL Online Poker Rooms took a hit during the World Cup, & the bright ones had built it into their Forecasts.

The World cup though was, in effect, a month, call it 2 months at a push. It was also during the Online Poker seasonal lull. Which tends to happen annually.

2009 revenues in certain Rooms were savagely down on 2008, but there was no World Cup in 2009.

So many people have their head in the sand here, "it's not happening, it's because of this, that, & the other".

City-speak means PLC's have to wrap the words up in Results statements. "The market is mature, & possibly in decline" would never do.

Online Gaming is massive now. But many platforms have easier & quicker ways to win & lose money - Online Casinos, Bingo Sites, Slots sites, none of which existed 3 or 4 years ago, are having THEIR boom time now, with breathtaking revenues. There is only so much money in circulation with which to gamble, & other Gaming formats have caught up with the world of Online.

Common-wallet platforms which supports a variety of gaming methods (Poker, Bingo, Betting, Slots etc) are not really fussed which route the punter uses, as long as they stay on that platform, it matters not which way they gamble.

Dangerous tho dont you think...with all the huge advertising promotions you see on tv, footballing marketing, online adverts etc for slots, online casino's, bingo sites etc etc.....and all during a recession where a lot of people are struggling for money and financing options...the country is probably heading for a chronic Gambling addiction problem!

It doesnt even seem to get mentioned much in parliament but I'd guess thats due to the huge Tax revenues they bring in!

I think you can tell by you average 100nl cash game the poker boom is over

I'd guess that a lot of the decline is because of the insane profits the card rooms make off the players.

If we use a conservative figure and say that each player uses 10% of their starting bankroll to pay their rake.

Card rooms would have to generate 10% growth from new business every year from new players entering the games just to offset everything they took out of it the previous year.

That would be to just maintain figures. Now I'm assuming that rake is actually a shit load more than that so the reason the total revenue shrinks is because money is constantly being sucked out of the system.

Having never worked off an actual bankroll I have no idea of the figures but some of the grinders must know. If you start with a $10k bankroll and play 200k hands making a profit of 5bb/100 how much rake would you have paid?

I would guess it's considerably more than the $10k you started with?

PS and FT might have big numbers but a lot of it is nitty 24 tabling regs, even down to really low stakes. 24 tabling regs might not be the greatest players in the world but it's a lot easier to get money out of the 1 tabling recreational players, if you can find one.