@Stubbe-Unibet wrote: The full story should have been shared from the beginning, but as I mentioned above, it's a combination of many things, I just added a very important point. I do believe the series will grow, the costs will be cut (taking everything into consideration, I think the trend is pretty neutral). The planning is already easier and the finals are doing really well, as shown above. Leo is contantly monitoring things and will obviously make changes wherever needed - it's not been that long since the exchang options was removed. You sound like you're talking yourself up for the current Schalke season. "I believe things will grow", "costs will be cut", yada yada. The great thing about future promises is that current underachievements are supposed to be forgiven. Let's take a look at the real numbers: This Sunday the final dropped from 53 to 47, still in the plus but not even close to offering another full package. The finals are doing so well that today, the Wednesday final didn't even run. Again. At least for the 4th time since November. But wait, it gets better: A 200 Euro loss on a 500 Euro GTD tourney is pretty bad. Yesterday, the UO50 had 19 participants. I don't see a neutral trend there, I see fluctuation around a much lower average. Also what I find really funny is the "it's not that long since the changes were implemented"-excuse. Like @XY said before, people are using up their old tickets. Actually for the first few weeks or even months after the stop of exchanges, you should have seen an increase in participation, not a decrease. I'm currently sitting on 25*50 Euro tickets, that's 1250 Euro worth in total. Those tickets are probably going to lead to 4-6 UO250 tickets, which means another 1000-1500 Euro turnover on top of it. A guy sitting on a lot of UO10 tickets would have to kill them first, then play the 50s and then play the 250s, giving you roughly 3 times the turnover of his early November ticket value. However like you could read here, a lot of ticket hoarders will simply stop playing after they cleared the tickets. So where's the growth to come from? Regular Unibet growth that you're then trying to sell us as growth due to the ticket exchange reform? Come on...The fact of the matter is that those changes alienated a huge part of your UO player base, something that obviously no one on the Unibet poker team saw coming and now we're up to explanation #5. @Stubbe-Unibet wrote: No. I don't think we're pushing out anyone. Everyone is playing on the same terms - the same terms you'll find on literally ever other site - the lower stakes become softer and the higher stakes should not really become tougher - so overall it should be easier to qualify for the casual recreational player. Impossible to please everyone in this case, but offering a service which make the games tougher at lower stakes, that really doesn't fit with the strategy. Don't let facts get in the way of a good narrative. Everyone was playing on the same terms when those terms included exchanges as well. You were talking about casual recreational players being given a higher chance to qualify for the UO. If you give one of those casual recs a UO2 ticket, his chances of reaching the live event without rake is 1 in 1000. If you include the rake, it's what? 1 in 1600? If you then consider that those guys are at a serious disadvantage compared to the more sophisticated opponents playing the UO50s and UO250s, their chances are what? 1 in 2000? 1 in 2500? 1 in 3000? 1 in 5000? Pretty easy way to the finals if you ask me... It's also cute that you're talking about making the lower levels less competitive, yet on the other hand you're talking about growth and cost effectiveness. Let's say you manage to not alienate 100 % of the former ticket hoarders and some will stay on. Where in the qualifier tree do you think they are then going to play again? I started with the UO2s and probably must have had a 50 % ROI there. Then I moved on to the 10s, beat that level and went to the 50s. I clearly made the UO2s and the UO10s tougher for the other guys when I played there and when I left, those games became easier. Once my tickets are used up, I'm staying at Unibet but I'm leaving the UO games for good. However for someone like me, still interested in playing for a live package, it would be good business to start at the lower levels again, once all those tickets are used up! Which then would make these levels a tougher place for the other guys. And as I've said many times here before, I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking that way...
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