Mixed Bag for US Online Poker in November
November was a month of mixed results for the online poker and entire igaming industry in the United States. The state-regulated market remained confined to a handful of states, with still only five of them offering online poker.
The ray of sunshine has been coming from PokerStars. For weeks, the online poker operator has been telling players that it’s actively working to join its Michigan and New Jersey player pools. There is now a date for that to happen: January 1, 2023.
Michigan signed on to the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA) in the spring of 2022, but none of the operators in the state said a word about actually using that agreement to expand the market. That was until PokerStars made its announcement in December. Since PokerStars had yet to combine any sites in the US market – unlike the WSOP/888 platform that is already connected in Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware – so this was its first dip into interstate US online poker.
Just before Christmas, PokerStars USA set the date for January 1. It will kick off the new year with Michigan and New Jersey players combining to share player pools.
According to PokerStars US Managing Director Severin Rasset, the combination will provide “more breadth and depth of games, more tournaments with bigger prizes to win, amped-up promotions, and more choice.”
🚨 We are proud to announce that players in Michigan and New Jersey will be able to play together as of January 1, 2023. 🥳
New Year's Day Shared Liquidity Special Tournaments
6pm: 💵 $100 buyin 💰 $100k GTD
6:30pm: 💵 $10 buyin 💰 $50k GTDDo you plan to play? 👇 Game On 🥳 pic.twitter.com/WXgiW4vJcu
— PokerStarsUSA (@PokerStarsUSA) December 23, 2022
Meanwhile, BetMGM/partypoker and WSOP/888 still haven’t mentioned doing the same.
And as PokerStars works to improve the market, November saw it stumble. The month-on-month and year-on-year numbers varied from state to state. The little information that we can analyze is highlighted below.
Delaware: November 2022
In October, all of Delaware’s igaming business fell from the previous month. In November, the numbers were up for the month but down for the year.
Online poker, in particular, fell significantly from November 2021 to November 2022, though it rose more than 20% from the previous month.
-Nov 2022 online poker revenue of $34,319 = up 20.4% from Oct, down 17.6% from Nov 2021
-Nov 2022 total igaming revenue of $987,423 = up 2.9% from Oct, down 0.1% from Nov 2021
Michigan: November 2022
As usual, the Michigan Gaming Control Board does not separate poker from other igaming offerings, so we have no actual idea as to how the online poker sector is doing. We only receive numbers for the full igaming market.
That entire market did grow from October to November and from the previous year, resting at a new high mark and delivering more than $27.1M in tax payments to the state.
-Nov 2022 total igaming revenue of $145,428,114 = up 3.2% from Oct, up 35.2% from Nov 2021
Nevada: November 2022
Nevada only offers online poker, has only one provider with an operational license, and does not report any revenue to the public.
New Jersey: November 2022
It wasn’t a great month for New Jersey, as the monthly numbers were down, and online poker even dropped a bit on the year. Even so, the igaming sector did grow nearly 24% from 2021 to 2022. Even the entirety of the New Jersey gambling market grew 0.3% on the year.
-Nov 2022 online poker revenue of $2,233,692 = down 4.5% from Oct, up 0.1% from Nov 2021
-Nov 2022 total igaming revenue of $147,176,744 =down 2.9% from Oct, up 23.9% from Nov 2021
Pennsylvania: November 2022
In a rare occurrence, Pennsylvania’s online poker revenue increased by the month and the year. The totality of igaming revenue, however, only improved on the year, but it fell notably from October to November.
The entire Pennsylvania gaming industry grew nearly 5% on the year, continuing its strong recovery from the pandemic. From the total of $452.4M in revenue, the tax revenue portion of that came to nearly $182M for the state. And $53.5M of that came solely from igaming.
-Nov 2022 online poker revenue of $2,540,506 = up 2% from Oct, up 3.3% from Nov 2021
-Nov 2022 total igaming revenue of $128,639,234 = down 7.8% from Oct, up 37% from Nov 2021
