The Impact of Black Friday 3 Weeks On
Posted on 19/05/2011 in General News
By 30 April H2’s Internet Poker Volume Index (H2VI) was at 3,882, 16.4% behind where it was at the end of March. The peak in activity in April was, rather unsurprisingly, pre-Black Friday on Tuesday 5 April when it reached 4,706.
The low point that month was on Wednesday 20 when the index fell to 3,381 – a level that had not been seen since July 2010 during the low point of the year. The last time a level lower than this was seen in an April was in 2008.
Player Activity Weighting (100% = 24 Hour Peak) 7 Days to 07-05-11
Source: H2 Gambling Capital
The major beneficiaries have been the sites that continue to accept play from the US including Cake, Bodog and Merge. However, it appears that initially listed sites such as bwin.party saw the highest rises in the lower player bands. But as the weeks have gone by, and companies have been able to refocus their marketing efforts, it appears that bwin.party has seen progressively more benefit at the higher values of play.
Likewise, it appears PokerStars and Full Tilt have also managed to recapture some of their high value players.
Percentage Change in Internet Poker Player Numbers by Game Value 7 Days to 07-05-11
Source: H2 Gambling Capital
After the initial shock of Black Friday total RG player number on PokerStars and Full Tilt have stabilised at approximately 13% and 30% of their pre-Black Friday levels respectively.
The weighting of play around the clock on both of these sites now mirrors that of bwin.party confirming there is now no US activity on either site.
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H2 Gambling Capital is a UK based management consultancy providing off-the-shelf data and analysis regarding the gambling industry. H2 have supplied information to over 500 organisations in the past decade including governments, regulators, lobbyists, corporate clients and the financial services sector. During this period H2 have also have successfully completed over 200 consulting projects on behalf of clients.
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FURTHER INFORMATION
Contact: Simon Holliday
Telephone: +44 (0)161 332 1949
Email: consulting@h2gc.com
Or visit www.h2gc.com