Figures released by WhichPoker today show the devastating effect of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) on those poker rooms which had to pull out the US market. But it also shows that their losses were other's gains, as PokerStars and Full Tilt gobbled up the extra players.
(PRWeb) December 8, 2006 -- Figures released by WhichPoker today show the devastating effect of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) on those poker rooms which had to pull out the US market. But it also shows that their losses were other's gains, as PokerStars and Full Tilt gobbled up the extra players.
Prior to the UIGEA Party Poker was undisputedly the top dog in the online poker industry, regularly pulling in over 14,000 players in peak times; all figures quoted in this article are for real money ring game players. But as a publicly listed company on the stock exchange Party Poker was forced by legal restrictions to pull out of the US market when the UIGEA came into effect, cutting its peak time player numbers down to just over 7000.
Poker Stars and Full Tilt meanwhile have been greedily hoovering up Party Poker's discarded American players, and are now in the midst of their most profitable periods since their sites began.
Poker Stars, who previously averaged around 6500 players per day, have seen their daily player numbers shoot up to around 8500 (an increase of around 24 percent) while their peak numbers are approaching 12,000 compared to around 10,000 prior to the UIGEA. Effectively this means Poker Stars has swapped places with Party Poker to take over the number one spot as the world's biggest online poker room.
Full Tilt have also been flying high in the aftermath of the UIGEA, pulling in an average of 4000 players every day compared to around 2000 in the period prior to the bill, a huge 50 percent increase. They have now even achieved parity with Party Poker, something that was unthinkable four months ago.
There has also been a marked decline in Paradise Poker's player numbers. Paradise Poker is owned by Sportingbet, which like Party Gaming, is listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange. Stock exchange rules forced it too to pull out of the US market when the UIGEA came into play, causing a catastrophic drop in player numbers for the US-dependent poker room.
Interestingly Bodog and UltimateBet, two poker rooms which have made much of the fact that they intend to remain in the US market, have not seen the same leap in player numbers that PokerStars and Full Tilt have experienced. Both have seen a steady rise in traffic but neither has seen player numbers increase by as much as they might have hoped. Both sites now average around 1900 players per day compared to around 1400 before.
Go to WhichPoker.com for a full graphic display of the changes that the UIGEA has precipitated.
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