New Jersey iPoker Traffic Down 23% Since March

Each year, Nevada’s online poker market may experience a traffic boost due to the annual World Series of Poker taking place in Las Vegas from the end of May to mid-July, but online poker markets elsewhere tend to suffer the summer blues as people find more outdoorsy pursuits to occupy their time.
Nevertheless, it was still worrying to see New Jersey’s online poker traffic plummet this week to its lowest level since regulation was introduced in late 2013. In fact, the state’s online poker traffic is currently down by 23% over the past 90 days, which is a full 15% lower than the 8.3% dip noted for combined markets across the globe.
Looking back further, the Garden’s state has seen a 28% downturn in its iPoker traffic over the past three years, which is concerning considering the launch of the world’s biggest online poker brand, PokerStars, last year has been unable to stem the slide. Over this period, PokerStars has seen a 21.3% reduction in the number of cash game players using the site, although it still continues to dominate the market with a 40.3% of all traffic.
The WSOP NJ/888 Poker partnership, on the other hand, seems to have taken the brunt of the downturn, and is currently down by 35% over the past 90 days, with its market share also falling from 38% to its current level of 31.9%. Helping to explain some of this rather dramatic decline is the technical difficulties experienced by the site since trying to implement a client update.
In May, New Jersey subsequently suffered a 17.5% fall in its online poker revenue, and analysts will now eagerly be anticipating June results to gain a clearer picture as to where the market is truly heading. Needless to say, a big drop in revenues will indicate that the industry is struggling, whereas if revenue remains relatively stable then this likely shows that players may be moving away from cash games as they increasingly try other poker formats, such as lottery type sit-and-gos.