The news that US players are no longer able to play online poker and that accounts are currently frozen is clearly bad for everyone involved in the industry, but what can we expect to see now?:
Online Marketing – It doesn’t look good for forums, poker podcasts, affiliate sites and anything that pretty much relies on two or three main sites as sources of income. I guess these types of income could be replaced by non-poker advertising for products likely to appeal to the poker player market, but with a potential reduction in traffic this might be a hard sell.
Player Sponsorship – Apparently Viffer was a couple of days away from signing a big deal with PokerStars. I wonder what will happen to all the ‘paid’ pros at FTP and Stars? The Red Pros at FTP have fairly basic rakeback type deals they they’ll simply lose out on those, but some of the deals must be fully contracted, monthly payment deals. I think we’ll see a few more players getting dropped.
Poker on TV – The PokerStars Big Game, Poker After Dark, High Stakes Poker. The TV shows that bring poker to the mainstream on TV are on the whole sponsored by Stars and FTP. These shows were a key way for these sites to market to an audience that they don’t have access to via traditional marketing and advertising activity. I’m interested to see what happens to these now.
Live Poker - It seems likley that there will be an increase in live play in the US, but the WSOP should be interesting this year, as online sites were a common route to the Main Event. We could see a field of 5,500 or less this year. There may also be a knock on effect on the prelims if money in online accounts remains frozen. Many players would have been cashing that out to play this year.
Non US players - I think we'll continue to see a strong market, especially on Stars. Even tonight, the Daily Ninety Grand is running on Stars, with full guarantee, 2,244 players and a $112k prizepool. The Sunday Million has had $500k dropped from it’s guarantee (to $1m) but things seem about as normal as they could be, given the circumstances.
In all this is difficult to speculate on how long (if ever) it will take to get US players back online, but will people keep sponsorship deals, TV shows, training sites and other activity in operation in the hope that if they keep going they’ll be around and ready for a second poker boom if poker gets legalised?
Party Poker looks to be in good shape now. That $300m or whatever they paid to the US government doesn't look so bad now...
