Online poker sites predominantly operating in Europe are yet to see any significant gains following April’s indictments in the US. Those in the iGaming industry that thought Black Friday would lead European facing sites to erect a monument to the date have been proven wrong as PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker remain the world’s largest sites.
In the days following the indictments, a number of European companies, including Pwin, had seen shares rise by as much as 30%. That’s flies around shit stuff right there! Bloomberg reports that this was nothing more than a blip and that small gains are all that European sites have achieved.
According to Poker Scout stats published in the Bloomberg article, in the month since Black Friday, Pwin’s PartyPoker only gained 1%. 888 Holdings was the best performer but even then, their numbers were only up 3%. OnGame actually dropped off 10% whereas the Microgaming network used by Ladbrokes lost as much as 5%. This was all as Stars and Full Tilt sat pretty in Europe despite what’s going on over the pond.
James Hollins, an online betting-industry analyst with Evolution Group, told Bloomberg, “There was huge excitement in the market; a lot of the problems in poker have been due to PokerStars.
“But they’ve spent the past few years recycling a huge amount of the U.S. money in Europe, and the returns have been enormous. They’ve still got lots and lots of money, and a fair bit of brand power.”
Poker Scout also estimates that Stars has a staggering six times more online cash players than Pwin’s Party Poker. It merely shows that the Black Friday indictments have done little to harm the big two sites and their operations in Europe.
With it looking like there will be no regulation at any point soon in the US, it was baffling to us why the stocks of the European facing public companies saw such a spike in the first place. Trading on the future would surely mean that the stocks would decrease rather than increase, no? It seems like one of the Black Friday groups of losers identified by Calvin Ayre are already coming to the fore. It took a while for everyone to realize though.
