It’s a question for which the attempted answers continue to spark significant debate. Just how much is the online poker market really worth in the United States?
According to a new report series by Academicon and PokerScout, the potential size of a regulated U.S. online poker market is $2.2 billion in the first year of operation.
By year ten, however, the value will spike to north of $3.3 billion.
It’s easy to forget, however, that before the federal indictment of unregulated poker in April 2011, “the U.S. was by far the largest market, accounting for 27% of worldwide revenue,” the new report reads.
The study is based on an analysis of 4.6 million real money online poker players in 2009 and 2010, near the peak of unregulated poker in the U.S. The authors found that 1.4 million online poker players in the U.S. generated an average of $686 per year in revenue for poker operators, creating a $981 million market.
“Without a federally regulated online poker market, which appears unlikely, state-by-state markets will stay well below their potential,” says Dr. Ingo Fiedler, one of the study’s authors. “While a large state like California has a large enough player base to support an in-state market and even reach up to 80% of its market potential, smaller states like Delaware will not be able to maintain a market on their own.”
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