Official Poker Site/Network Tracking thread

[Sniper]

[ QUOTE ]
I do have a comment though, not sure if anyone touched on this before. As you all can see, the number of drop-offs for Party is not close to 80% of the number of PLAYERS. If the revenue drop off is really close to 80%, this would mean that the way that the analysis is performed above is somewhat flawed.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you search back a bit in the thread you'll find this is explained.

[ QUOTE ]
Let me preface by saying that I check Scout's site pretty often. I always see that Party's peak numbers are more than FT. But I never see the CURRENT Party numbers higher than FT.

[/ QUOTE ]

I see Party current numbers higher than full tilt all the time. You are correct that the Party and full tilt peaks occur at different times of the day.

[ QUOTE ]
A way to get a good analysis is to take a weighted average based on the number of players per hour for each calendar day and divide by 24 to come up with a more meaningful number. I contend that this number would at least switch FT to second and Party to third (and maybe lower?).


[/ QUOTE ]

Scout just added a 7 Day Avg of the AVG (not peak) traffic. You can also see this graphed out at his effects link.

[ADS]

[/ QUOTE ]

Scout just added a 7 Day Avg of the AVG (not peak) traffic. You can also see this graphed out at his effects link.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks,

I am trying to find the above, with no luck...can you direct me?

[Sniper]

Direct link to Scout's Avg player graph

This 2nd graph (also from Scout) showing Party's traffic pattern on 2 specific days is also interesting...

[Sniper]

Raw data sourced from PokerSiteScout , with permission.

Daily data represents the 24 hour peak Active Real Money Ring Game seats, at each site/network.
Sept Peak represents the max peak at each site across the entire month of September.
1wk Change: Day of Week difference from last week (ie Sat vs Sat last week) for last listed day
3wk Change: Day of week difference compared to the week before the legislation passed
Color Coding: Green(+) and Red(-) represents increase or decrease from previous day
7 day avg: Avg of last 7 day's peaks. Sites sorted by 7 day avg. Blue = 7 Day Avg > Sept Peak.

[Sniper]

[ QUOTE ]
From a competitive standpoint versus party, the best bet for stars, FT, Bodog or UB might be to buy one of the small publicly traded sites that has left the US market, in order to both hurt party more in the only market they have left and with FT/Bodog/UB grow versus stars. And paradise/Bwin should sell itself before there's nothing left to sell.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bluff, lets take a look at this... interestingly...

Of the 20 sites being tracked, 11 dropped (or are in the process of dropping) US players. So, 9 sites/networks still allow US players.

Of the top 7 sites, 5 allow US players... only Party & Ongame remain at this point in the top, and Ongame still hasn't felt the full effect of its decision.

That leaves 4 sites/networks in the bottom 13, that still allow US players.... Tribeca, Tain, Absolute & WPEX.

Now, the interesting part...

Tribeca and Tain are merging... this should move them into the top 5.

Absolute & Ultimate are now somehow ownership related, and there has been some discussion that the player base will be merged... if this happens they will likely takeover the #4 spot.

That would leave WPEX as the sole site accepting US players at the bottom of the pile.

I think you are right that there should be some pressure on the non-US sites to combine, in order to compete, as the sites still taking US players will have a user base advantage in competing for the non-US markets.

This is important, because even if the sites that currently accept US players should have to stop doing so in the future (or funding issues restrict the flow of US players)... they have a huge competitive advantage between now and then, in attracting non-US customers.

Bottom line, all sites should be focused on increasing their non-US business, whether thru consolidation or marketing.

Thoughts?

[Sciolist]

[ QUOTE ]
Bottom line, all sites should be focused on increasing their non-US business, whether thru consolidation or marketing.

[/ QUOTE ]
I would have thought that due to network effects (i.e, once a site hits a certain point, it'll grow simply because it has good table selection - see old Party, and once it drops below a certain point it'll probably die completely due to lack of table selection, see Paradise), the sites that dropped US players should be bought by the big sites immediately. That way, you keep their player base before it goes low enough that their table selection kills them.

[Sniper]

OK, this graph represents the 7 day average of Peaks across the month of October... I've stretched out the bottom half of the graph to provide some seperation between the 14 sites bundled between 1K-3K...

[BluffTHIS!]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Bottom line, all sites should be focused on increasing their non-US business, whether thru consolidation or marketing.

[/ QUOTE ]
I would have thought that due to network effects (i.e, once a site hits a certain point, it'll grow simply because it has good table selection - see old Party, and once it drops below a certain point it'll probably die completely due to lack of table selection, see Paradise), the sites that dropped US players should be bought by the big sites immediately. That way, you keep their player base before it goes low enough that their table selection kills them.

[/ QUOTE ]


I agree with this and that was the point I was making earlier, i.e. the privately held sites that now allow US players have a big incentive to buyout publicly traded smaller ones that left and increase their global player base. Stars has already been marketing to euroland so they don't have as big an incentive to buy another site's player base. But FT is the one that really does. But of course that also means having a committment to multilingual marketing and customer support. stars for instance does have versions of its web pages in other languages, but FT to my knowledge doesn't.

The sports sites that offer poker however may not be able to go after other countries because although they might not fear flaunting US, they probably do want to be able to go to other countries besides Costa Rica and Antigua. Bodog for instance doesn't accept canadians because Calvin Ayre is canadian.

I am also wondering why the delay in merging the Tribeca/Tain networks, and same for UB/Absolute if they have plans to do so. All of those sites really need to do any mergers/acquisitions quickly to move up in the rankings and be able to attract even more players, and especially for Tain to avoid the player losing table selection downward spiral that Sciolist mentioned.

And for poor paradise, all they will have to sell soon is their software platform.

[Sniper]

Raw data sourced from PokerSiteScout , with permission.

Daily data represents the 24 hour peak Active Real Money Ring Game seats, at each site/network.
Sept Peak represents the max peak at each site across the entire month of September.
1wk Change: Day of Week difference from last week (ie Sat vs Sat last week) for last listed day
3wk Change: Day of week difference compared to the week before the legislation passed
Color Coding: Green(+) and Red(-) represents increase or decrease from previous day
7 day avg: Avg of last 7 day's peaks. Sites sorted by 7 day avg. Blue = 7 Day Avg > Sept Peak.

[Mizzles]

Why is FT gaining players almost 2x the rate of Stars? Is it simply the deposit bonus that's responsible? If so, I think Stars is making a huge mistake in not having an inticing bonus of their own at this critical juncture.