And The Numbers Are In – A Look at the Carnage

Poker Scout has done their weekly report and there are no real surprises. I like the fact that Scout decided to compare the post Friday period so we can get an early look at how the market shakeup is hitting everyone.

Overall, the market shrank 23% last week. That’s pretty huge. The numbers since Friday for Stars, Tilt, and Cereus are interesting but pretty much in line with what most people in the industry have always guesstimated their traffic makeup to be.

PokerStars -25%
Full Tilt Poker -48%
Cereus Network -39%

The general buzz around the industry has been that Stars was doing about 80% non-US business and Tilt was about 50/50 so these traffic declines since Friday seem to indicate that industry estimates were pretty close.

The sites that have decided to stay and have not been indicted all, predictably, saw traffic increases:

Merge Gaming Network +23%
Bodog +26%
Cake Poker Network +19%
Everleaf Gaming Network +8%

Keep in mind that most of these guys started off from ridiculously low traffic levels to begin with. For instance, Bodog’s 7-day average is 700 cash game players. So if their 7-day increased to 882 players that’s a 23% increase.

PartyPoker +9%
iPoker Network +4%
Ongame Network 0
888Poker +5%
PKR +21%

iPoker and Party’s increases are impressive since they already have a substantial player base. 888 is semi-impressive and the PKR jump is on par with Bodog’s sort of gain. Not sure what the heck is going on at Ongame to not have any of their skins picking up an exodus of players.

Overall it looks like Full Tilt is going to take the biggest hit. Stars was able to use the last five years to diversify their player base and it shows. The lost the entire US market and only dropped 25%. Back in 2006 when Party left the US market it was roughly a 70% drop in their player numbers.

It will be interesting to see what trends develop going forward but this first snapshot at the carnage (for some and boom for others) is not too surprising.