According to a report from the Delaware State Lottery Commission, Delaware’s online poker revenue was up 23% from the previous month, but it was still the second-lowest ranked month for Delaware since the state legalized online poker back in November 2013.
Delaware’s three online gaming operators generated $173,096 from online gaming for the month of July but in total they raked in $31,398 in online poker revenue. The $173k generated in July was a bit lower than June but online poker revenue saw a reasonable boost, but probably not enough to not have the Delaware Lottery concerned about the state of affairs of online poker.
Although it was an improvement over June’s figures, when compared to the New Jersey online poker market where operators generated $2,146,500 in July it leaves a lot to be desired. Nevada’s online poker revenue looked really good for the month of June but the Nevada Gaming Commission is yet to release revenue numbers for July although they are expected to be good with many poker players being in Las Vegas to play in World Series of Poker events.
Dover Downs Hotel & Casino actually has the smallest market share out of the three Delaware operators but for the month of July it actually saw the biggest increase in new online sign ups to their gaming site. They had 140 new account sign-ups, which was 26 more than June. This had a positive impact on net revenue for the month. On the other hand, the two other Delaware operators, Delaware Park and Harrington, both had fairly flat months in terms of new account registrations and revenue that was generated from their sites.
The best month that the Delaware online poker market has had was back in December, the second month after online poker became legal in the state, when it generated $106,922 in online poker revenue. So it’s hard to be optimistic about the future of online poker in the state, given July’s revenue numbers are less than a third of that.
In February, a deal was made to form an online poker partnership between Delaware and Nevada so that player pools on respective online poker operators would be shared. With the drastic drop in online poker revenue in June and not very impressive July numbers now is the time for the online poker compact between the states of Nevada and Delaware to go live before things get even worse and there are even less poker players playing at these three gaming sites.
Although a seasonal decline was somewhat expected, a decline like this would not have been predicted, and it goes without saying that the Delaware online poker market will suffer if it doesn’t combine player pools with Nevada in order to guarantee enough action at the poker tables. With the deal already made, Delaware and Nevada gaming regulators just need to meet and make it happen. Once the online poker compact does finally materialize, then players who are physically located in either state, whether they’re resident’s or visitors, will be allowed to play at the regulated online poker websites.
The somewhat good news is that there is a market for online poker in Delaware, and December’s revenue figures is proof of that, but it’s not reasonable to expect that players will stick around if the operators are not offering them sufficient action and games. One of the main advantages of online poker is having the ability to multi-table, but this is hardly possible when the traffic at these online poker sites is really poor. Given they have already created accounts, when the compact will take effect it shouldn’t take them long at all to return to the virtual felt of these Delaware online poker sites.