Worldwide Online Poker Traffic Dives 13%
July 28, 2014 12:27 pmPokerScout.com has posted its latest traffic results for the worldwide online poker market, and its findings have sent shock waves across the whole of the industry. Not only has the size of the market contracted by 13% year-over-year, but several sites have reported record lows in player volumes.
Although a slight drop in traffic was expected for the summer season, the figures witnessed so far have been far off-kilter, and the rebound in traffic anticipated following the end of the 2014 FIFA World Cup also failed to materialize. As a result, 9 out of the top 10 sites saw traffic fall last week, most noticeably PokerStars whose traffic plummeted to levels not seen since Christmas Day 2008.
In major European markets, such as France, Spain and Italy, the situation has been exasperated by individual countries placing restrictive taxes on their domestic online poker operators, whilst also ring fencing player pools from other EU markets, practically making markets non-viable.
France, for instance, sets a particular high tax threshold on poker operators, but also has done little to help buoy the industry with negative statements coming from such high profile figures as ARJEL [French gambling authority] president Charles Coppolani, who recently declared that online poker as a fad is over. Commenting on state of the French market, Poker Scout had this to say:
“Meanwhile, ARJEL released a report that revealed that, during the first quarter of 2014, 12 percent fewer new online poker accounts had been created than in the corresponding quarter of 2013, continuing a downward trend that started in 2011, the year that the country chose to regulate and ring-fence online poker. We’ve talked about the “stagnation” of online poker in Europe for a number of years, but now it appears to be in rapid decline.”
Stateside, the 45th Annual World Series Of Poker helped give Nevada’s online poker industry a 20% boost in revenues, but elsewhere New Jersey recorded a nearly 10% to $2.05 million, while Delaware saw its poker revenues free-fall 55% to just $25,607 in June.