Ultimate Poker Fails To Impress America's Regulated Market

When Ultimate Poker, America’s first regulated online poker website, launched in Nevada back in April 2013, the pioneering poker room held high hopes for the future, with the company’s Chairman Tom Breitling commenting at the time that the site was “dedicated to being the players’ choice for online poker.” Buoyed by its early success, Ultimate Gaming then partnered with Trump Taj Mahal on November 21st 2013, to offer its product to New Jersey’s regulated market.
Before long, however, Ultimate Poker was joined by WSOP.com then Real Gaming in Nevada and last month the site saw its traffic drop from up to 220 cash game players at any one time to just 55 players, behind market leader WSOP.com with 95 cash game players.
The situation is even more drastic in New Jersey where Ultimate Gaming was a late comer to the state’s igaming industry, and thus far has failed to gain any traction in the market. According to last months stats, Ultimate Poker was the weakest of NJ’s six online gaming operatives, and whereas Borgata (bwin.party) and Caesars (888) returned revenues of $4.11 million and $3.05 million respectively, Trump Taj Mahal (Ultimate Gaming) generated a mere $50k in revenues, half the total of the previous month.
Naturally, the company has been doing a fair amount of soul searching as it seeks to salvage its dwindling fortunes, and one reason Chairman Tom Breitling has identified as an important factor limiting its success is the industry wide requirement for customers to furnish vast amount of personal details before being allowed to gamble online. As Breitling, explains:
“..people who’d played online poker in the past never had to go through this new, detailed process filled with extra clicks. No company ever before had asked for a Social Security Number or for geolocation information. It was like asking people to take their shoes off and step through a metal detector at the airport after years of walking straight to the gate. This [government created] friction impacts the user experience and affects revenues.”
In terms of factors under its own control are concerned, however, Ultimate Poker seems acknowledge that certain deficiencies in its software have added considerably to the business’ shortcoming, and presently a number of software flaws, as well as new features are being attended to in order to keep up with its competitors.
While Ultimate Poker is hoping that this and other improvements will help its brand regain the top spot in Nevada’s online poker market, the more saturated market of New Jersey is likely to pose a much more challenging environment for the operator where its very survival is at stake.