Poll: Has the industry capitalised on Full Tilt's shutdown?
Full Tilt Poker - which once claimed 20% of the global online poker market - was shut down following the Black Friday indictments
It has been almost a year since the events of Black Friday turned the online poker industry on its head, with the likes of PokerStars and Full Tilt shut down, and their founders indicted.
While Stars has been able to carry on, Full Tilt Poker, which once claimed 20% of the global online poker market, has been inactive since Black Friday, with its players still unable to reclaim the funds they had invested in the site, and the rumoured takeover by Groupe Bernard Tapie dragging on despite regular announcements that it remains on track.
Tilt stopped taking real-money bets in June last year after its Alderney licence was suspended, but has the rest of the industry capitalised on its shutdown?
Soon after its demise, PokerStars took 66% of Tilt’s players. More recently, bwin.party co-CEO Jim Ryan said his company had picked up around 15% of Tilt’s European traffic. Ryan also confirmed plans to merge its joint poker liquidity pools over the course of 2012 to become the second-biggest dot.com network after PokerStars.com. Despite this, the company’s pro forma revenues for poker dropped 7% in the company’s full year results for 2011, suggesting that even the largest operators have been unable to take advantage of the shutdown.
Only 888 Holdings appears to have benefitted from the events of Black Friday. The past year has seen the group produce record revenues, culminating in generating US$1m a day in turnover.
Moreover, Full Tilt’s Rush Poker brand, the first game to allow players to switch tables on folding or completing a hand, has since been replicated by other operators despite Tilt saying it would claim and defend a patent. One such operator is InstaDeal, which was granted an Alderney licence last month, while Ryan said bwin.party was also preparing to launch a similar product.
Tilt’s former rival PokerStars has also beta launched its Zoom product, but while all three could benefit from a growing number of players preferring this form of poker, it has taken them a long time to attempt to snap up the former Rush Poker players.
What do you think – has the egaming industry acted swiftly enough to capitalise on Full Tilt’s demise?
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