PokerStars loses revenue again

Author

Vargoso

Published

11/17/2020

Updated

2/28/2022

Flutter Entertainment released its financial results for the 3rd quarter of 2020. About PokerStars, the site lost 10% of its income during this period. In this article, we will detail the reasons for this.

Flutter Entertainment Q3 2020 Results

In general, Flutter Entertainment followed its trend in the first half of the year and reported a huge increase in revenues — 30% or £1.325 billion.

The company continues to grow in important markets like Australia and the USA. However, casino games and sports betting are responsible for growth. Unfortunately for PokerStars, they were unable follow the thread of the last 6 months, at the peak of the quarantine boom.

The Stars Group poker revenue declined by 10% in Q3 2020 and returned to pre-pandemic levels. Only their online casino improved and grew by 32%.

Who is guilty?

Such a report reminded us of the PokerStars results in 2019 when the poker room was losing income at approximately the same rate. However, compared to last year, the reasons are very different:

Lack of investment.
Post-quarantine and a seasonal decline in traffic.
Non-stop experiments of the room with the software, which for the next quarter will include the full transition to Aurora.
The same type of promotions with tasks, although with increased prizes.
Withdrawal from several markets, mainly China.

Flutter executives "announced" that GGNetwork and WSOP online series increased their marketing expense and were also a cause of the decline in revenue.

Nevertheless, none of the above problems was a secret for the management of the rooms, and its impact could be calculate in advance.

Does PokerStars have good prospects?

PokerStars continues to be the global leader on the online poker market; they still have a wide margin of action to overcome revenue loss. Peter Jackson, Flutter CEO, stated in the press release:

"Looking ahead, while the outlook with respect to Covid-19 remains uncertain, we are confident that our business is well positioned to capture further growth in a sustainable and responsible way."

It can be assumed that this growth (for the poker site) will involve larger promotions and the implementation of the new policy of the room, which was announced by Severin Rasset in early October. Recently it was known that PokerStars started targeting eSports and inked up a deal with Furia (a Brazilian team).

Competitors don't stand still either. As we know, GGPoker and other sites are hosting a hybrid $10,000 WSOP Main Event, which will hit PokerStars in the United States. Such a struggle undoubtedly benefits the players and makes the prospects for the entire industry brighter.

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