The 2014 World Series of Poker definitely had a positive effect on Nevada online poker. Tens of thousands of players descended upon the Rio this summer, with a decent portion of them checking out Nevada’s online poker offerings. The end result was $1.037 million in June revenue for the state’s three poker sites, WSOP.com, Ultimate Poker and Real Gaming.
This is the first time that the Nevada online poker operation has cracked the $1 million mark since they began releasing revenue figures in February. The main catalyst behind the record month was the brilliant cross-promotion work by the WSOP and their parent company, Caesars Interactive. During the 2014 WSOP, they continually pimped their own poker site, plastering WSOP.com ads all over the casino, offering live deposit cages and featuring a Grind Room – an area complete with laptops for online poker players.
These efforts helped WSOP.com experience a 50% cash game traffic increase in June. They were no doubt the largest beneficiaries of the 65 live tournaments that ran at the Rio. Ultimate Gaming only saw a small boost, with PokerScout showing that their June cash traffic increased by 10%. Real Gaming, which is still in developmental stages, has yet to garner any significant action yet.
Expect another Nevada online poker increase next year
As many know, legal internet poker is still relatively new in the United States, so the country’s poker sites are still finding their way. Caesars Interactive spokesman Seth Palansky explained this by saying, “We became the number one (online) poker offering in the country, outdoing the online sites in New Jersey as well.”
There’s a very good chance that Caesars will improve upon their cross-promotional efforts next year and experience an even larger traffic increase. Eilers Research gaming analyst Adam Krejcik hit upon this after reflecting on Nevada’s June poker revenue. “I expect Caesars Interactive likely learned quite a bit during this past month in terms of how to effectively cross-market, drive new player traffic, online-offline tournaments, etc.,” Krejcik told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We expect the incremental impact to be even bigger next year.”
Still looking forward to Interstate Poker
While the boost to Nevada online poker provided by the 2014 WSOP is great, it’s only temporary. PokerScout shows that cash traffic at WSOP.com has already decreased by 50% at the beginning of August. So it’s pretty clear that the world’s largest poker event won’t provide sustainable, long-term traffic.
This is why getting interstate poker up and running is so important. Nevada has an agreement in place with Delaware to combine player pools. Now, the only thing left is for 888 to link the two states together with their All American Poker Network (AAPN). 888 were just recently approved for the task, so there’s no timetable on when it will happen. But Delaware and Nevada both figure to benefit when their player pools are linked.