Real Money Zynga Poker Off the Table for US Players

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Wednesday, July 31st, 2013 | Written by Charles Washington

For some time it’s been assumed that social poker king Zynga would eventually evolve into a real-money poker company.

But those assumptions were completely upended last week when Zynga’s new boss dramatically announced that his company was shedding their plans for real-money gambling – in America, anyhow – in an attempt to return the struggling outfit to focus and profitability.

Zynga facing problems with play-money poker

Zynga Poker has been the undisputed leader of the social poker market for years, and it continues to enjoy a healthy lead over its competitors.

But maintaining a lead is cold comfort when you’re watching that lead, and the revenue the game generates, slide consistently quarter over quarter.

That’s been the situation facing Zynga Poker, which is dealing with a shrinking user base that produces less revenue per player.

What’s the cause of the decline? A number of explanations have been offered. Some argue that Zynga simply hasn’t done enough to keep users interested in the game by introducing new elements and features to the software. Others point out that there’s going to be some natural loss of user base as more and more competitors – especially sophisticated ones like PokerStars – enter the space.

As for Zynga’s side of the story, they attribute some of the revenue issues to fraud, which is a fair enough explanation. But the executives overseeing poker also took responsibility for the failure of the product itself in a recent earnings call, saying that they were planning to devote more top talent to the product in an attempt to reverse course.

It’s hard to argue with the notion that Zynga decided to abandon their American real-money online poker plans due to their more pressing need to stabilize one of their core products. There were no doubt some concerns about player cannibalization and brand confusion as well. Put it all together and it does become difficult to see how Zynga could expect to execute on both fronts successfully in the near-term.

The company may have also been concerned about the relatively slow rollout of legal poker in the United States. Despite recent federal bills, only one state currently allows companies to offer regulated online poker.

Overseas online gambling initiatives continue

While the company is ditching their attempt at securing a place in the American market for online gambling, that’s not to say that they’re out of the real-money online gambling busomess entirely.

Zynga is currently in a partnership with bwin.party, a partnership that has resulted in two real-money gambling offerings from Zynga that are available to gamblers from the UK.

The first is ZymgaPlusPoker, which is essentially a skin of Party Poker. That means you’ll see Zynga branding on the room, and you’ll enter it through Zynga.com, via a Zynga facebook app or a Zynga mobile install, but you’ll still be playing Party Poker software and be a part of the player pool at Party / bwin Poker.

The second is ZyngaPlusCasino, which operates in a similar fashion. Think standard casino games with a Zynga branding twist, along with a few slots developed specifically to incorporate popular Zynga games like FarmVille.

Zynga executives were basically mum as to the future of these projects, which arrived with great fanfare in early 2013. While they weren’t given the same definitive axe that Zynga’s American efforts received, there was also very in the way of positive talk regarding expansion – or even a strong committment to continue – the relationship with bwin.party during Zynga’s most recent call to discuss earnings and company outlook.