With all the advertising campaigns and promotions from the online poker rooms, which one out of them all is currently attracting the most players? At the moment, PokerStars receives the highest player volume, with Full-Tilt Poker not too far behind. Party Poker is hanging on in 3rd, which is a big drop from holding the top position for so many years up until a few months ago. The player traffic standings have changed many times over the years, and there are numerous ways in which a poker room will gain or lose traffic over periods of time.
Advertising campaigns can work really well for poker rooms in attracting new depositing players. If you watch any poker show you will notice that a certain poker room always sponsors them, and a short ad will be shown between during the start and the end of the commercial breaks. Big events will also be sponsored, and so you will often find the name of the poker room preceding the name of the actual tournament. This helps to give the room more exposure, and so the more people that see and hear the name, the more likely it is that the viewers will choose that poker room if they decide to start playing online.
Party Poker once was at the top of the market for a long time due to its numerous advertising campaigns, attracting huge volumes of players. If any new online player was going to sign up to any poker room, it was more than likely going to be Party Poker. So why are they no longer at the top?
Party Poker received a huge number of players from the US, which made up a large bulk of their traffic. When the UIGEA came into force, a number of poker rooms closed their doors to US players, with Party Poker being one of them. The rooms that kept their doors open to US players such as Full Tilt and PokerStars are now thriving, as the US players that once sat down at the Party Poker tables migrated into other rooms that allowed them to play.
There are a few other rooms that currently accept US players, but these two are the heavy hitters when it comes to player traffic. Being top of the traffic listings will also help to attract players that may be aware of this, because there must be a very good reason why a certain room has such a high player volume. The traffic standings look pretty solid at the moment, but Full Tilt has been snapping at PokerStars’ heels for a long time, so it might not be too long before we see a new room at the top of the player traffic standings.
