This week, the PokerScout Scouting Report featured an in-depth look at the largest online poker markets in the U.S. under regulation. It’s mostly, but not all about population, as you’ll see in the graph to the right of this paragraph, which comes from the Scouting Report. PokerScout explained the results: “Not surprisingly, California topped the list at twice the size of its nearest competitor, New York, with Texas trailing not far behind in third. Nevada led New Jersey due to much higher spend per player.”

PokerScout teamed up with the consulting firm Academiconin order to extract the numbers. Californiahas a projected market size of $155 million, followed by New York at $72 million. Texasand Illinoisfollow at $62 million and $56 million, respectively, while Floridatrails both at $48 million.

The next largest market sizes belong to Nevada($38 million), Massachusetts($36 million), Pennsylvania($33 million), Ohio($32 million), and New Jersey ($29 million). From a population standpoint, the top 10 states according to PokerScout weigh in as follows:

California: #1 at 38.0 million people
New York: #3 at 19.5 million people
Texas: #2 at 26.0 million people
Illinois: #5 at 12.8 million people
Florida: #4 at 19.3 million people
Nevada: #36 at 2.7 million people
Massachusetts: #14 at 6.6 million people
Pennsylvania: #6 at 12.7 million people
Ohio: #7 at 11.5 million people
New Jersey: #11 at 8.8 million people

In Nevada, Las Vegas accounts for about two-thirds of the number of players, followed very distantly by Henderson, Reno, North Las Vegas, Sparks, and Paradise. In terms of the value of the players themselves, the Scouting Report reveals, “In Nevada, 1% of the players account for 56% of the rake obtained by operators and 10% account for 91%. The bottom 50% of the player pool accounts for only 0.31% of the total playing volume.”

The bottom 50% comprises a critical group, however, according to PokerScout: “Operators clearly earn the majority of their rake from a small group of players. But it is wrong to assume that the occasional players are not important to the market. Those players bring money into the system; they are most often net depositors.” Nevada players were found to be more active than players from the rest of the United States, on average.

PokerScout’s data is based on traffic over the six months preceding Black Friday, the date on which PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, and UltimateBet all vacated the U.S. market following 11 indictments handed down by the Department of Justice. PokerStars paid players back immediately, while the Full Tilt remission process for U.S. customers will begin on September 16. Absolute and UB are in liquidation and it’s questionable how much, if any, of those sites’ funds will be paid out to players.

PokerScout’s Scouting Report is a daily newsletter for the online poker industry, with in-depth data and analysis of the market. More information can be found by clicking here or contacting support@pokerscout.com.

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