Big Shakeup Underway in Online Poker Traffic Rankings

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Wednesday, July 10th, 2013 | Written by Lucy Brown

It’s been an eventful year for online poker. The return of Full Tilt Poker, the big changes in the European market and the push to access the regulated American market are just a few of the major forces in play.

The result of those forces? Major shakeups amid some surprising trends among the major online poker rooms.

Let’s walk through some of the biggest shifts, and the winners and losers created by each.

PartyPoker dropping rapidly

The big loser so far in 2013, at least in terms of overall traffic volume, is PartyPoker. Some of their traffic loss was anticipated as part of a broader brand shift aimed at better positioning the room with casual players.

But even that brand shift can’t account for Party’s plummeting traffic. And competitors appear to be benefitting from the player drain at Party Poker, which has seen their overall traffic cut by more than half since 2011.

Full Tilt experiencing a volatile year

Full Tilt Poker is a more complicated story. The room relaunched in November of 2012 to significant press and a wave of traffic that catapulted Full Tilt to the number two spot in the online poker traffic rankings. But that level of traffic failed to persist, and Full Tilt saw a Party-like decline in late 2012.

Things stabilized for Full Tilt Poker in early 2013, and the room seems – for now at least – to have a firm handle on the second spot. But what seems stable today can become unpredictable tomorrow, especially when your competitors have the ability to gain traffic at your expense.

Growth for 888 Poker and iPoker

Speaking of competitors, the two rooms in Full Tilt’s rearview mirror are 888 Poker and the iPoker Network. 888 has bucked industry trends and seen reasonable growth over the last two years – largely thanks to its mobile poker products – but the room is still about a third smaller than Full Tilt.

iPoker, on the other hand, appears poised to give Full Tilt Poker a run for its money in the near-term. Buoyed by strong brands like Titan Poker and William Hill, iPoker actually snagged the second spot from Full Tilt for a brief period in June. FTP surged back on the strength of a Rush Poker promotion, but now the two rooms appear set to battle it out for the rest of the year.

PokerStars remains dominant

While there’s lots of movement in the top five overall, there’s none at the actual top spot.

The number one spot in online poker’s traffic rankings continues to be held by PokerStars, and that doesn’t appear poised to change at any point in the future that we can see.

PokerStars maintains such a lead that every non-PokerStars room in the top 10 could merge and they would still be well short of the size of PokerStars. That massive lead, along with the lack of an obvious factor that could upset it, seems to ensure that PokerStars will continue to dominate online poker for years to come.

What’s to come in 2014 for online poker traffic?

More of the same seems to be on the menu, with jockeying in the top ten and plenty of position shifts – some temporary, some less so. Party Poker, for one, will have a lot of work to do if they’re going to both rebrand their poker site and stop their plummeting traffic.

The newly-regulated U.S. market could also have a substantial impact on the top of the online poker traffic charts in 2014. That impact is, of course, conditional; if states in the U.S. don’t seek to pool players with international jurisdictions, then there won’t be any impact at all.

But if New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware – or really, even just New Jersey – sign deals with other countries like the UK for shared poker liquidity, then we could see even more volatility in the battle for online poker top traffic spots.