In a curious announcement made last week, the social gaming giant Zynga, whose Zynga Poker title is one of the leaders in the free-play industry, announced that it would not pursue real money online poker in the United States. As explained by Zynga COO David Ko, “The decision really centered around focus.” According to USA Today, its Zynga Plus Poker and Zynga Plus Casinobrands will continue to accept real money wagers from players in the UK. The former is on the same network as PartyPoker.

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Whether Zynga is bowing out of the US race for good or just temporarily remains to be seen, but one analyst told USA Today, “There’s no doubt that Zynga would like to leverage their very real advantage in casino-type games into this emerging opportunity of real money gambling. The synergies are clearly there.”

Zynga’s investors did not appear to be pleased at the news, as its stock dove a remarkable 14% on Friday alone to close at $3.01, down $0.49 on the day. In after hours trading, shares of ZNGA, which are traded on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange, rebounded slightly.

A declining user base is also to blame for Zynga’s latest woes, as according to Investors.com, “The San Francisco-based company is struggling to attract users to its newer social games and to keep users playing its old hits. Average monthly active users for all games fell 38% to 187 million. Users had fallen 13% in Q1 to 253 million.” On the bright side, its second quarter revenues checked in at $230 million, well above the $183 million that investors had predicted, according to Reuters.

On PocketFives in a thread in the Poker Legislation forum, reaction to Zynga’s announcement was fairly mixed. The original poster in the thread surmised, “I read this as a punch in the gut that interstate online poker will become legal anytime soon. Zynga has really deep-pocketed investors and I am sure it would not have made this statement if there were any chance of online poker coming anytime soon. Investors ran for the door.”

Another poster explained that Zynga lagging behind competitors in Nevada and New Jersey, two states with regulated online poker, could have also factored into its decision: “Could it also be a function of the fact that since they are not already in Nevada and would not likely have found a casino partner in New Jersey, other well-known operations would have had a significant head start in the market on them?”

Zynga applied for suitability finding in Nevada last December, a process that was expected to take 12 to 18 months. According to online gaming reporter Chris Grove, “A finding of suitability would not allow Zynga to immediately participate in Nevada’s regulated online gambling industry. The company would still need to form a partnership or establish some sort of presence in Nevada and also apply for a specific license related to interactive gaming.” Rumors had the company teaming with Wynnin Nevada.

One analyst applauded Zynga’s abandonment of its online gambling efforts in the US, telling USA Today, “It’s a space that will likely become crowded, expensive, and with big incumbent players from Las Vegas getting involved in soon.”

Zynga’s IPO occurred in December 2011 at $10 and the stock has largely tanked since, losing 70% of its value in a year-and-a-half.

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