Home / Poker News March 2009 / PartyGaming unscathed by recession, contemplating return to US
PartyGaming unscathed by recession, contemplating return to US
Posted by: James Carter. - Fri, 2009-03-13 16:29
Despite the problems it has recently had with US authorities, and despite the severe – and may I add rather unfair – beating it has taken from its competitors like Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, PartyGaming is doing fine, according to a report detailing its 2008 revenue, which seems to be 3% higher than the company’s 2007 earnings.
The fact though that Party Poker got demoted from industry leader to just a member of the pack did no good to its poker operation whatsoever. As a matter of fact, the company’s revenues soar in all segments, except online poker – the one area which used to be the cornerstone of the organization.
Party Poker blamed the 7% decline in online poker revenues on the late appearance of its loyalty program which followed the revamping of the client software. The new software has been launched in September, and the loyalty program only took off around the middle of December. They couldn’t help but note though that their operation – effectively banished from the US market – was under pressure by US online poker operators who began expanding towards the European market.
Despite the generally positive results, the net earnings for the 4th quarter of 2008 were down around 18% compared to the same period of the previous year.
PartyGaming CEO Jim Ryan has stated that the negotiations between his company and the US DoJ were presumably headed towards a positive outcome and said that the company would release a statement regarding the matter as soon as a final settlement was reached.
When asked whether or not PartyGaming would consider a return to the US market, Ryan had an extremely interesting answer. He said that while his company would only consider a fully legal return, they were sparing no efforts to keep the brand name alive in the States. Their play-money feature is ideal for this purpose, as it’s not against US law and it does keep the company in touch with its potential US customers in preparation for a much awaited return prompted by a regulation of the industry on US soil, one which according to some – is bound to happen sooner than most would think.
