WSOP.com Enjoying Surge In Traffic Thanks To Tournament Series

According to the latest report from PokerScout, WSOP.com Nevada has seen its cash game traffic surge to 160 players over a seven-day period as players from all over the globe play on the site in between  taking part in live WSOP tournaments.
Prior to the 45th Annual World Series of Poker kicking-off on May 27th, WSOP.com was the USA’s third most popular site, but within the space of just one week the online poker room managed to surpass previous market leader Party Borgata (NJ), which currently shows 140 players, and WSOP (NJ) with 120. WSOP.com’s incredible performance is even more remarkable considering Nevada’s population of 2.76 million people is around a third that of The Garden State.
The encouraging results also give cause for optimism as to the benefits of an effective, well-coordinated marketing campaign in raising player awareness and traffic. From the beginning the World Series of Poker has implemented a high level cross-promotional campaign linked to its WSOP.com site, which has proved successful in encouraging players to open up new online accounts and deposit money at WSOP.com. Ahead of the $10k WSOP Main Event, for instance, the site ran a $215 satellite with 25 seats available, which then encouraged 1,235 players to play online. The impressive figures even compelled poker analyst known as tizzle to comment on twitter :
“1235 players in the @WSOPcom ME Scramble. 187 cash game players. Maybe the NV problem isn’t liquidity, it’s really the lack of a product?”
WSOP.com’s success has naturally prompted the industry to wonder whether the World Series of Poker itself has the potential to attract a new legion of fans to the game, and assist in leading a poker revival stateside. Unfortunately, the signs do not seem so promising in that regard as Nevada’s other two sites, Ultimate Poker and Real Gaming, have yet to experience any increase in traffic over the same time period. Commenting on the situation, an article which appeared on Off Shore Gaming Association (OSGA), stated:
“Now after Black Friday and the UIGEA poker has fallen out of favor in the United States and today’s younger generation seems to have lost interest..At some point poker interest will pick up again but I can’t tell you when that will be but one thing I can tell you is it won’t be as a result of the WSOP.”