WORLDWIDE ONLINE POKER MARKET STAGNATES
Posted 3/25/11 : But Italian market is showing impressive market share
Respected poker site, PokerScout reports that even with the opening of the French market, the total worldwide poker market continues to stagnate.
PokerScout's ACES indicator shows that online poker traffic is essentially static with an annual rate of decline of 0.1 percent.
Those networks worth mentioning in respect of year-over-year changes include:
Notable gainers:
– Merge Gaming Network Up 323 percent
– 888poker Up 41 percent
– Entraction Network Up 7 percent
Notable losers:
– Cake Poker Network Down 69 percent
– Everest Poker Down 59 percent
– International Poker Network (IPN) Down 39 percent
– Microgaming Network Down 30 percent
– iPoker Network Down 17 percent
– Full Tilt Poker Down 6 percent
– PokerStars Down 1 percent
Small but interesting:
– Yatahay Network Up 145 percent
– Everleaf Gaming Network Up 13 percent
– WSEX Down 42 percent
The results are for the main (.com) sites and networks unless stated otherwise. Note that growth rates for some .com sites have been negatively affected by the shifting of French players to separate, French-only networks.
Although the full year hasn’t been recorded yet, Italy's market is already showing great promise. PokerScout.com reports that the Italian online poker market continues to exhibit strong growth, now comprising nearly 10 percent of the worldwide market. The strong performance of Italian online poker speaks well for the potential of regulated markets in general, and may continue to accelerate with the launch of cash games in Italy this year.
France holds an 8 percent share of the worldwide market and while it has not shown quite the same enthusiasm for poker even with the availability of cash games its slightly weaker performance may be due to a tax structure that some consider unreasonably high, leading some operators to limit their exposure to the market or stay out altogether.
