According to a recent report, the top two online poker rooms, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, now control a whopping 60% of the entire industry. When you consider that the online poker industry is made up of around 500 operators, those are some pretty impressive numbers for only two combined sites.
The news came this week from independent poker tracking site, PokerScout, who reported an overall increase in online poker traffic of 0.2%. However, it seems that while the traffic itself is staying fairly steady, a large number of players are converting from smaller poker rooms to PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.
Just a year ago, PokerStars and Full Tilt were already claiming 50% of the overall market share. Being the two largest online poker rooms in the business, both accepting US players, it was only a matter of time before the percentages jumped to 60%.
What this essentially means is that of all online poker players, from every region of the world, 60% of them play at either PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker.
This news does not necessarily mean bad tidings for the rest of the online poker industry. In the last year, there’s been a significant rise in overall player traffic, even for the less renowned contenders. PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker saw a collective growth rate of 68%, while all other online poker communities share an overall growth of 12%.
Notable expansions came to other well known operators, including Party Poker, Bodog, Everest Poker and the OnGame Network. It wasn’t that long ago that these were considered toddlers in a world of grown-up poker sites. Suffice to say, their popularity has aged them past adolescence.
US player acceptance cannot be the only incentive that drawing so many new players to PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. There are other comparable qualities that these two major operators seem to excel in. For starters, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker have the biggest online poker tournament schedules.
Using the two company’s largest weekly events as an example, we can clearly see the advantage. PokerStars leads here, with a weekly $1.5M GTD known as the PokerStars Sunday Million. Full Tilt Poker’s biggest weekly is the Sunday $750k GTD. The nearest competitor here is Party Poker, with a $300k GTD each week.
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