What Does The Future Hold For Ultimate Poker?

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Wednesday, May 21st, 2014 | Written by Stephen Smith

Ultimate Poker may have been the pioneer of USA’s online poker market but one year after it first launched in Nevada on April 30, 2013, the site’s performance has so far failed to impress either its dwindling customers, or Ultimate Gaming co-founder Tom Breitling, who is now leveling most of the blame on excessive regulation and bureaucratic red tape.

Ultimate Poker background

Back in April 2013, Ultimate Poker was a play money site with over 41,000 likes on its Facebook fan page, before making the transformation over to real-money online poker by the end of that month. Signalling big plans ahead for the country’s first ever regulated online poker site, Ultimate Poker Chairman Tom Breitling commented at the time:

“We are proud to be the first company to deliver legal and secure real-money online gaming to poker players. We have worked closely with state gaming regulators to demonstrate our unique and compelling poker platform that, above all, players know they can trust. Ultimate Poker is dedicated to being the players’ choice for online poker.”

Ultimate Poker subsequently enjoyed a positive start in Nevada‘s nascent igaming industry and between May and September 2013, when it was the only internet poker room operating in the state, the site boasted an average of 180 to 220 cash game players over a seven-day period.

One year later

Fast forward one year and the whole of Nevada’s online poker industry in April only showed 160 cash players competing online at any one time. Even more worryingly, not only has the state’s market size shrunk but so too has Ultimate Poker’s share of it. Instrumental in the sites decline was the launch of Nevada’s second real-money online poker room, WSOP.com, which last month accounted for 95 cash game players to Ultimate Poker’s 55 players, with further competition on its way after Real Gaming launched late March.

Ultimate Poker makes debut in New Jersey

On November 21st, 2013, Ultimate Poker also made its debut in New Jersey, but has since had difficulty gaining a foothold in the Garden State. Casing point, Borgata (bwin.party) and Caesars (888) represented 63% of NJ’s internet gambling market in April, with $4.11 million and $3.05 million in revenues respectively, while Trump Taj Mahal partnered with Ultimate Gaming came out bottom of the state’s six igaming operators, with just $50k in poker revenues down from $100k in March.

Ultimate Gaming’s Tom Breitling laments red tape

Asked to comment on the disappointing performance by his Ultimate Gaming brand, Tom Breitling was quick to point out that operating within a regulated online poker landscape brought considerable challenges all of its own, not least the sheer amount of personal details required from customers before being able to play even a single hand of poker online.

“It doesn’t seem logical to require the same amount of information to play a hand of online poker as you need to get a mortgage,” explained Breitling as reported on pokerfuse.

Further elaborating on his point, Breitling noted that with each computer click a potential customers is requested to perform online at least 10-20% of people chose simply to exit the site. Expressing his frustration at the whole protracted process, Breitling, explained:

“..people who’d played online poker in the past never had to go through this new, detailed process filled with extra clicks. No company ever before had asked for a Social Security Number or for geolocation information. It was like asking people to take their shoes off and step through a metal detector at the airport after years of walking straight to the gate. This [government created] friction impacts the user experience and affects revenues.”

What’s the future hold for Ultimate Poker

Factors holding back Ultimate Poker are similar to the hurdles facing other online operators, such as payment processing issues and financial institutions being slow to recognize the legality of internet gambling in select states.

Crucially, however, Ultimate Poker’s software has come under criticism for not being sufficiently attractive to gamblers, although the business is currently undertaking the task of straightening out some minor flaws, whilst also adding some new features which their local competitors already offer.

Finally, Ultimate Poker has enjoyed a measure of success in the past from its promotional campaigns, but unfortunately for them as soon as the promotions came to an end the same problems immediately reared their heads. In other word, the site’s promotions may have been good value for money but sadly were not sufficient to stem the tide of general dissatisfaction.

Therefore, whilst Ultimate Poker may continue to operate in Nevada’s online poker industry on the strength of it being just one of three operators in that market, in the more saturated state of New Jersey the war may already have been lost by Ultimate Poker.