Estimated amount of players with just Nevada up?

[daveh07]

How many players are we estimating at the 3 biggest sites, Is it in the 10,000 range like merge currently or you think it would be lower?

[DonkeyQuixote]

Originally Posted by daveh07

How many players are we estimating at the 3 biggest sites, Is it in the 10,000 range like merge currently or you think it would be lower?

Let's start with some basic assumptions:

1.Caesars will be one of the sites. MGM will be one of the sites. Stations will be the third site.
2. No international player pooling yet, no other pooling yet.
3. Sites will be allowed to offer play for free for prizing both in and out of Nevada.
4. Step 3 promotions will be a large marketing spend, and Caesars will market to almost its entire Total Rewards database for play for fun. Same for Stations Boarding Pass database.
5. Nevada will allow play by tourists who are in the State at the time.
6. Licensees will not provide real money play rake-free to Nevadans

A pure guess at launch, fewer than 10,000 Total concurrent real money players.

Nevada is really small and there are live play options available everywhere.

[Schwatt]

Norway has a population of ~4.9 million

Svenska Spiel is a Norway only, gov't run pokersite and is the 17th most populous online poker site, with a daily peak of ~2k cash players. That is more than Bodog or Cake, and 75% of Merge.

Nevada has a population of 2.7 million, plus over 30 million tourists visiting every single year.

I would give an honest estimate that the total Nevada-only cash players would be at least 5-6k at peak every day. (spread across all intrastate sites). Half the poplulation, but with the amount of tourists in state at any given time (a large percentage of which are gamblers), I don't think this is out of line.

[PokerXanadu]

Originally Posted by Schwatt

Norway has a population of ~4.9 million

Svenska Spiel is a Norway only, gov't run pokersite and is the 17th most populous online poker site, with a daily peak of ~2k cash players. That is more than Bodog or Cake, and 75% of Merge.

Nevada has a population of 2.7 million, plus over 30 million tourists visiting every single year.

I would give an honest estimate that the total Nevada-only cash players would be at least 5-6k at peak every day. (spread across all intrastate sites). Half the poplulation, but with the amount of tourists in state at any given time (a large percentage of which are gamblers), I don't think this is out of line.

Umm, where do we start...

Svenska Spel is a Sweden-only gov't run site, not Norway. The population of Sweden is about 9 million.

There are about 40 million visitors to NV every year, but not all at once. On any given day, the number of tourists in NV averages less than half a million. So the potential NV population to draw from for intrastate i-poker is on average 3.2 million on any given day. If you assume the same rate of play as Svenska Spel, you get 700 cash players at peak. But the outlook is a little better than that for NV actually, since Svenska Spel has only a 34% market share of Internet poker in Sweden. So about three times that, about 2K peak cash players, might be a good estimate for NV.

Svenska Spel is a gov't-run monopoly on Internet gambling. Although the Swedish gov't does not enforce the law against unlicensed foreign sites, they are still the leading site for Swedes (50% of the Swedish Internet gambling market) as they are the only legal site in Sweden.

This differs from NV, where there will be multiple competing licensed sites. But we know that multiple licenses doesn't mean multiple successful sites. Two or three market leaders will no doubt capture the lion's share of the market. At a guesstimate, I'd speculate that the top site will have 40% of the market share.

This means the top NV intrastate i-poker site will have about 800 cash players at peak time, which equates to traffic about comparable to Cake. Sustainable, but nothing to write home about. Of course, it's just a stepping stone to multi-state ipoker in the US.

[ike hax0r]

Stepping stone or a reason for people to say, "Look, we knew this internet gambling thing was too good to be true and wouldn't produce the revenues people said it would." It especially could be a problem if sites start folding before other states get involved. Another interesting thing about Svenska Spiel is the rake is (was?) very low. I would be very surprised if we see that in the NV sites.

[Schwatt]

Oh its Sweden, my bad.

I still think your estimates are low, Nevada is a gambling Mecca. Scandinavia, not so much.

Just think of all the promos that will be around, like Joe 6 pack gets $100 in online chips when he checks into Caesars Palace for a 3 day weekend.

[PokerXanadu]

Originally Posted by Schwatt

Oh its Sweden, my bad.

I still think your estimates are low, Nevada is a gambling Mecca. Scandinavia, not so much.

Just think of all the promos that will be around, like Joe 6 pack gets $100 in online chips when he checks into Caesars Palace for a 3 day weekend.

Doubtful, imo. The casinos won't want tourist Joe 5 Pack spending time playing online poker while in town. They want him at the live slots and casino games. The attraction for Casears, et al to run online poker is to leverage the popularity of online poker among the younger generations towards getting those players to bridge into play at their b&m venues, not the other way around. (But once interstate i-poker is going, they will no doubt send Joe 6 Pack an e-mail after he goes home, inviting him to play online so he can win some promotional item that gets him to come back to the casino.)

[DonkeyQuixote]

Originally Posted by PokerXanadu

Doubtful, imo. The casinos won't want tourist Joe 5 Pack spending time playing online poker while in town. They want him at the live slots and casino games. The attraction for Casears, et al to run online poker is to leverage the popularity of online poker among the younger generations towards getting those players to bridge into play at their b&m venues, not the other way around. (But once interstate i-poker is going, they will no doubt send Joe 6 Pack an e-mail after he goes home, inviting him to play online so he can win some promotional item that gets him to come back to the casino.)

My initial thought was the same as yours, once the guy is on property, they would "incent" him to the most profitable gaming channels they can. However, surprisingly to me, the casinos might not share that view, according to discussions I have heard here.

They will have a great incentive to sign up tourists, for real money play when they are here, and then, even in the absence of interstate real money play, for play money play with incentive prizing like you describe .....

Except it will not be an email offer, but rather an in-game solicitation .....

They see a need for going online, is to create a sticky experience and reach customers who ignore emails and spend time online.

[Schwatt]

Well here's the thing. The long term health of the intrastate games depends on getting tourists to play.

Don't you think the casinos know that? I highly doubt they are putting all this time and lobbying money in place, expecting a few hundred local Nevada residents to steal, 3bet, and regwar all day on their virtual tables. It's not a sustainable online poker business model.

Maybe they will do something like exchange your Total Rewards points for online chips or something. But I'm not sure how much an online poker site takes away from B&M revenue when they are both equal options.

There will be no online slots, BJ, roulette, etc. It's poker only, a pretty select market.

[LastLife]

Originally Posted by Schwatt

Well here's the thing. The long term health of the intrastate games depends on getting tourists to play.

Don't you think the casinos know that? I highly doubt they are putting all this time and lobbying money in place, expecting a few hundred local Nevada residents to steal, 3bet, and regwar all day on their virtual tables. It's not a sustainable online poker business model.

Maybe they will do something like exchange your Total Rewards points for online chips or something. But I'm not sure how much an online poker site takes away from B&M revenue when they are both equal options.

There will be no online slots, BJ, roulette, etc. It's poker only, a pretty select market.

They aren't thinking about Intrastate at all. Nevada's total gaming revenue is not going to be affected by intrastate Ipoker. I doubt it will even reach 8 figures.

This is all done for federal legislation.

[ike hax0r]

^^^ It's almost like the best thing they could do is get ipoker running and then try to have some internet gambling dispute with another state to force federal action.

[Grasshopp3r]

Internet gaming will be the hook to bring more people to Vegas, especially for off peak seasons in the summer. The WSOP is in June/July because the convention spaces are empty.

[kennabot]

If they expect tourists to a driver for internet poker in NV they are going to be disappointed. I can't imagine people going on vacation to Las Vegas and wanting to play online poker in a hotel rooms when they can play live.

[Skallagrim]

Originally Posted by kennabot

If they expect tourists to a driver for internet poker in NV they are going to be disappointed. I can't imagine people going on vacation to Las Vegas and wanting to play online poker in a hotel rooms when they can play live.

While the world is a big place and there are all kinds of people and so it is probably wrong to say that not a single person ever will do this, it seems pretty obvious that this is the case for the VAST majority of LV visitors. +1

The LV casinos have two interests in online poker: the first is, as grasshopper stated, getting people to go to LV; the second is the possibility of a market with sufficient liquidity to add some real additional profit to the bottom line. They will not achieve either of those objectives from only in-state NV online poker and they know it.

Skallagrim

[Groggy]

I think that eventually you'll see computers set up in casinos similar to the way they implemented slot machines. This will be a way for tourists to play without needing to have any knowledge of the technology. This way you always get a diverse player base while still having people partake in the other casino amenities.