Last year, Ultimate Poker (UP) made history by becoming the first regulated online poker site to go live in the United States. Unfortunately, things haven’t been going so great for UP this year. Their cash game traffic has been stagnant in Nevada for quite some time, and they failed to develop much of a presence in New Jersey. Hopefully UP can turn things around and eventually flourish as more US states regulate iPoker. But for now, there are three troublesome signs that show the site isn’t doing so well.
1. They Completely pulled out of New Jersey
We’ll start with the most-obvious and publicized sign: UP’s pullout from the New Jersey market. UP’s parent company, Ultimate Gaming, moved out of New Jersey after their land-based casino partner, Trump Taj Mahal, started planning for a November 13th closing date. Making matters worse is that Trump Taj Mahal still owes Ultimate Gaming $1.5 million in revenue payments. UP never gained much traction in the Garden State anyways, but they’re now confined to just Nevada.
2. A Number of Key Personnel have left the Company
As expected, customer service reps and other New Jersey-based staff members were let go. But one unsettling surprise is that key personnel have also left, including Chief Marketing Officer Todd Kobrin, Director of Poker Operations Scott Yeates, and Poker Product Manager Chris Danek. There are still people running the poker site in Nevada, however, it’s never a good sign to dump some of your top brass. The likely scenario is that UP is looking to dramatically cut costs and retain the minimal traffic they have in Nevada until iPoker regulation spreads throughout the US.
3. They’ve parted ways with most of Team U
A big piece of news recently was that UP split with Jason Somerville. The popular poker pro had just begun season two of his webseries “RunItUp” and was proving to be a real asset for the company. However, the New Jersey pullout has forced UP to rethink a lot of things, including Somerville’s deal. The latter refused to take a big pay cut while saying, “I’m not a cheap date.” Aside from Somerville, Team U has also lost a number of other pros, most recently including Brent Hanks, Jeremy Ausmus, Phil Collins and Will Reynolds. Now the only players left on Team U are Antonio Esfandiari, Dan O’Brien and Danielle Andersen.