Record sign-ups

It’s good news for city types and poker players alike after PartyGaming announced massive revenue growth, mostly down to a record number of real money sign-ups and therefore increased yield per player per day in their quarterly results.

This keeps the company’s shareholders happy and also means bigger and better prizes for those players who chose PartyPoker as their hang-out for online play.

In cash terms, the company’s revenue is £342.6 million, up 54% on last year and signs-ups are up 28% to a staggering 14 million. That’s a lot of people playing poker.

At the heart of this growth is the international expansion of online poker. Over 39% of new real money sign-ups in the quarter came from countries outside the US whilst in March, the proportion of new real money sign-ups coming from outside the US exceeded 40% for the first time.

In addition, PartyGaming is pursuing a strategy of market consolidation having integrated recently acquired skins EmpirePoker.com, MultiPoker.com and IntertopsPoker.com.

Commenting on today’s announcement, Martin Weigold, Group Finance Director, said:

“This quarter saw the launch of the first of our multi-lingual websites. PartyPoker.com is now offered in English, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Russian. More foreign language versions are going to be rolled out later in the year along with our multi-currency offering”

“I am pleased to report that we have made a strong start to 2006. The first quarter has seen continued strong growth in poker on the back of a record number of poker sign-ups. Blackjack has remained robust with net revenue averaging $0.7 million per day whilst the introduction of PartyCasino.com two months ago, as part of the fully integrated Party-branded platform, has exceeded our expectations and lifted overall net casino revenue (including blackjack) to over $1.0 million per day."