Southern Europe poker traffic back to normal
As lockdown restrictions are lifted, people are taking a break from online poker in Italy, Spain and France.
Hopes that online poker could continue its unprecedented rise after the global lockdown were dashed a little bit this week, as pokerfuse reported that the Southern Europe standalone poker rooms were back to close to pre lockdown traffic levels.
As usual the measurement to judge the growth and decline is cash game traffic, and they have reported that the combined Southern Europe market, which shares liquidity between Spain and France has dipped below 5,000 concurrent cash game players after having been over 9,000 during the start of the lockdown in March. This is roughly where they were at the start of the year.
This is no doubt due to the fact that lockdown restrictions are easing in those countries as well as other forms of gambling entertainment, like betting on sports, are on their way back. There is also perhaps a slight seasonal component thrown in, as online poker traffic usually slows down during the summer, as well as the promise of live poker returning.
Live poker is, slowly, coming back
Cash game traffic is, however, only one indicator of poker’s growth and decline, and is by no means a perfect measure. A lot of cash game players, for example, have migrated to Jackpot SNG formats like Spin & Go, so it’s getting harder to compare traffic year on year. During the lockdown there has also been a particular focus on big guarantee tournaments rather than cash games, such as the extended SCOOP series and the many live poker series that hosted a leg online.
Live poker is slowly on its way back in Europe and seemingly back in a lot of parts of the United States. King’s Casino in Prague, which was one of the first European card rooms to reopen, has now started running MTTs which have been one of the last formats to return to bricks and mortar poker rooms.
SCOOP and the GGPoker WSOP-C series end this weekend and a number of other big online festivals have just ended, so next week it will be interesting to see if the generous guarantees continue at the major poker operators or if the global poker market also looks like it is returning to normal. Look out for if the Sunday Million next weekend goes back to its old guarantee of $1 million, for example.
Will we see online poker traffic return to normal globally? Let us know in the comments:
