Hi everyone. Here are the results of the PPA member survey, at http://theppa.org/press-releases/201...rket-01262012/

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Majority of PPA Members Playing Online Poker Prefer a Licensed and Regulated U.S. Market

Washington, DC (January 26, 2012) – Of the Americans still playing online poker, nearly 90 percent would prefer playing on sites licensed and regulated pursuant to U.S. Federal law, according to a recent survey commissioned by the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), the leading poker grassroots advocacy group with more than one million members nationwide. The findings also showed that, despite the Department of Justice’s crackdown of online poker on April 15, 2011, nearly half of online poker players are still playing online poker on offshore sites.

The survey of over 8,000 PPA members was conducted by U.S. Gaming Survey and represents the largest online gambling survey of American players. Participation included all 50 states, Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico and covered all socioeconomic groups.

“Our membership has been increasingly vocal on the need for a licensed and regulated U.S. online poker market and this survey is another example of the growing urgency for Congress to take action,” said John Pappas, executive director of the PPA. “As we move closer to creating the framework necessary to license and regulate this industry while protecting consumers, it is our hope that Congress will use this critical feedback to create responsible legislation that will benefit all Americans.”

“In the over ten years I have been involved in measuring American opinions of U.S. gaming, never have I seen such a remarkable rate of response and thoughtful commentary as I did with this survey,” said Larry Gibbs, VP of Research at US Gaming Survey. “The results overwhelmingly illustrate the fact that U.S. poker players want, and in fact are demanding, regulation.”

Key findings from the survey:

The majority of PPA members are between the ages of 30 and 69 years old and earn an annual income of at least $50,000.

Of the PPA members who play online poker and participate in the state lottery, the majority felt that licensing and regulating online poker in the U.S. would not reduce their discretionary funds for lottery purchases in the future.

The majority of current online poker players (74 percent) felt that licensing and regulating online poker in the U.S. would increase their personal web security and privacy.

The majority of players (81 percent) support new U.S. laws requiring simple and straightforward IRS documentation for online poker winnings, as the current laws that regulate casino gambling are extremely difficult to apply to the online experience.

Finally, should online poker be licensed on an intrastate rather than national basis, only 1 in 7 PPA members would move to another state to play on a licensed and regulated online poker site vs. continuing to play at an online poker site operating outside the U.S.


About The Poker Players Alliance
The Poker Players Alliance (www.theppa.org) is a nonprofit membership organization comprised of over 1,000,000 online and offline poker players and enthusiasts from around the United States who have joined together to speak with one voice to promote the game and to protect poker players' rights.

About U.S. Gaming Survey
US Gaming Survey was founded by a research group with over 30 years of online gaming experience dedicated to providing top quality gaming research focused on accurate reporting and custom analytics.

Firmly supported by trust, US. Gaming Survey is a unique marketing research organization focused upon one defined category: Online Wagering. Specifically, US Gaming Survey is able to measure, analyze and forecast the United States public behavioral position for online wagering including poker, lottery, casino and sports.

To receive more information about the U.S. Online Poker Survey and find out more about US Gaming Survey contact them directly via e-mail at webmaster@usgamingsurvey.com or via telephone at +1 (610) 301-1255.

Interesting.

I'm ignorant in the area of surveys, so forgive me if these are stupid questions.

Is this survey and survey company relevant enough to use in making our arguments both, via social media and (most importantly) in the hearings? Will the survey be published in a trade magazine or newsletter?

Thanks.

Did they try and contact more than 8,000 and only 8,000 responded or they only contacted 8,000 of the million claimed members? If the latter, how did they choose which ones to contact?

"The majority of PPA members are between the ages of 30 and 69 years old and earn an annual income of at least $50,000".

.... and why does the PPA Board think that its 1,000,000 members are not able to support the organization through donations/dues ?

DQ has a point. Maybe I'm way off here, but it does seem odd to boast a mil+ members, and on the other hand have terrible turnouts for live events and way less cash on hand than an ignorant person like myself would expect. What DQ quoted makes it look even worse.

i've flogged that dead horse around quite a bit over the years (prob 50% of my posts ITF are related to the 1MM members ppa boasts but how they're more like 200 members)

Members come in all shapes and sizes.

Perhaps several hundred are active and committed enough to participate in the daily action plan every day.

Perhaps several thousand are active and committed enough to participate in the ongoing email and letter campaigns.

Perhaps several tens of thousands are active and committed enough to participate at important times and in reaction to important events.

And perhaps several hundreds of thousands are active and committed enough to participate in major "this is it" actions, as the situation warrants.

And perhaps a fair number of the 1,000,000 members are happy to have simply signed up and publicly indicated their support for our goals and wish us well in our efforts.

Of course if DQ were running the show he would probably purge the members who have not donated money or failed to write their legislators more than once in the past year. He seems to believe such purges help the effort by whittling away the general supporters and re-enforcing the connection of the remaining, but pure and active, few.

DQ's tactics worked well in Czarist Russia, but I think our situation is a little different.

Skallagrim

DQ clearly is not suggesting that you "purge" less active members. His issue is that your claim of having over 1 million members is dishonest. You either are willfully misinterpreting DQ's words, or you aren't smart enough to understand his very basic critique. Either way, it's not very surprising why the PPA has been so ineffective at advocating for legalization of poker.

Hardly.

Over 1,000,000 US citizens have signed up to be PPA members. Each did so at their own choosing (admittedly in an easy process) and their independent existence was verified. They did so, mostly for free, simply because they support the idea of legal online poker. They did not do so, in the majority, because they wanted to spend significant time working the effort, nor because they wanted to contribute funds. But they expressed their support.

Who are you or I to categorize, praise or denigrate these folks by arguing about whether to count them as "members" is "dishonest" or not?

They are what they are and I am glad to have whatever support, no matter how limited or occasional, that they care to give.

Perhaps you may wish to consider the famous line from Milton's Paradise Lost: "They also serve who stand and wait."

Skallagrim

PS: with regard to your last line, how about asking a neutral outside observer to rate the effectiveness of the the PPA: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/57...ffort-1158512/

Now if we could just get those 8000 people to click on the link to fb or tweet some Congressmen we would blow the roof off this b@#$. Hey Rich just an idea to link to the action plan in the OP.

Wish we had a better response rate for the annual survey than sub 0.8%. Thats not good.

It may be wrong to assume that the 8,000 polled were the total number of responses or that all 1 million members were contacted and asked to participate. Polls of this nature are usually done with "representative" samples.

When I have some extra time I will try and obtain the raw data.

Skallagrim

Thanks, Skall, but only do it on my account if its no hassle though or if it was done very differently from last year's survey.

I tried to get this data last year and, while I eventually got it, it was a giant pain in the ass. I already took the raw data from last year and ran it by my friend who does this for a living to get his thoughts.

I dont really need to do that again. I personally already have enough color on my end to decide how much weight to give this survey. Others can judge for themselves and look up my thoughts from last year if they have any interest.

EDIT: Checked, response rate for last year turned out to be 4% FWIW. Would be curious what the open email rate is as well as the response rate this year but, again, if and only if its easy to get as the PPA seemed very happy with the 4% response rate last year despite the fact that all the research I did on the subject and my contact in the business all said that was a terrible number. Just different ideas I guess.

Thanks for the understanding LG. It does take time to get folks off their regular work pattern and go get this kind of information. Plus I think in this case the information is mostly in the hands of the third party that did the survey - last years, IIRC, was an in-house poll that was not designed to be "representative" in the statistical sense.

Skallagrim

"Purge" is more descriptive of the Stalinist era. I don't know if you meant "pogrom", which is more descriptive of the Russian empire, but those had very different objectives.

I think that the million member PPA is misleading if it can't get some basic grassroots organization goals achieved.