How the Neteller arrests impacted online poker site traffic

PokerSiteScout, which reports on traffic to online gaming sites, has an interesting graph displaying the early reaction to the recent Neteller arrests.

Bodog and Full Tilt appear to have taken a shot to the chops, with the number of peak players down more than 27 percent and 23 percent in a week-over-week comparison of January 12-14 versus January 19-21, 2007.

The figures for changes in the average number of players is not as bad as peak numbers, but even there, Bodog is down nearly 25 percent while Full Tilt shows a drop-off of more than 20 percent.

Industry leader Poker Stars shows a loss of 13 percent during peak periods, while Ultimate Bet, Tain Network, World Poker Exchange, and Action Poker Network all showed a peak player reduction of between 12 and 17 percent. Microgaming Network, which has a lot of European-facing sites in its group, showed a drop off of only 6.3 percent. Absolute Poker fared even better, losing just slightly less than 2 percent.

Of the European sites, which include Party Poker and Ongame Network, none reported a drop of more than 4 percent, with Everest gaining more than 4 percent during peak periods and 8.4 percent in the average number of players.