Online Poker Rooms Starting to Sink
- July 10th, 2008
- Posted in Gambling News, Online Casino, Poker News
The poker boom is starting to bust at PartyGaming and some of the other smaller poker sites on the web. Like many of the other online gambling groups it is managing to still earn a profit and replace lost poker revenues with increased income from casino and bingo games. The group’s overall gross revenues since the end of April have eased off, and although some drop-off is to be expected at this time of year the company said the decline has been slightly bigger than expected.
The group blamed the distraction of Euro 2008 and strong competition from operators still able to accept US players on their sites for the disappointing performance of the poker division during May and June. Since the US cracked down on non-US based poker sites, PartyGaming has lost its lead in the online poker market, with iPoker and Full Tilt Poker overtaking it in recent months while PokerStars has more than double the number of customers.
The strong performance in casino has been driven by a rise in the number of players and cross-selling from the poker sites. Operational efficiencies and lower marketing costs mean that Clean EBITDA margins are expected to be substantially higher in the first half than last year. Poker both online, on TV and everywhere has been growing at such a phenomenal rate it is possible that it has reached it saturation point.