Global Poker Traffic Down 13% From Last Year

Global online poker traffic has extended its losing streak this year, with the latest PokerScout report revealing cash game numbers fell for the ninth week in a row, and twelve times out of the last thirteen. Overall, last week’s global traffic was 1% lower compared to the previous week, and by 13% compared to the same week in 2013.
April 15th marks the third anniversary of Black Friday, which helped shut down a thriving online poker industry in the USA. Since then American players have been unable to gamble on such top sites as PokerStars and PartyPoker leading to the ongoing global decline in poker traffic and revenues.
Rather worryingly, PokerScout’s report also showed all the top ten ranked poker rooms experienced a drop off in traffic, with the top ranked poker rooms currently lining up as follows:
PokerStars (20,500), 888poker (2,300), Full Tilt (1,900), PartyPoker (1,900), ipoker (1,900), PokerStars.it (1,500), Bodog (1,450), PokerStars.es (1,400), Winamax.fr (1,300), and Adjarbet (1,250).
Movers last week included Bodog/Bovada up to 7th place, with the US friendly poker room now dominating the US facing market with more than 50% of the market. On the other hand, Winamax.fr fell two places from seventh to ninth.
Outside of the top ten, however, the Merge Gaming Network reported a huge 75% surge in traffic (575 cash players) to occupy 16th place overall. All this comes despite Merge officially shifting over to the Equity Poker Network (EPN) last week, a move that was expected to have cost it up to 20% of its traffic in the short term. Nevertheless, Merge successfully managed to implement a number of bonuses to stave off the anticipated fall off in numbers.
Turning our attention stateside, USA’s biggest regulated online gambling market of New Jersey reported a 15% surge in revenues to $11.9 million in March. However, online casino games provided the bulk of revenues at $8.6 million, up from $7.2 million in February. Online poker revenues, on the other hand, remained mostly flat at  $3.2 million from the $3.1 million generated the previous month.