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Fleet Street Gaming was founded by ex-PokerStars exec
October 27, 2008 (InfoPowa News) — Fleet Street Gaming.com, a U.S. subscription poker site along the lines of PurePlay, is the latest casualty of the economic downturn, advising its subscribers this week that it will close its virtual doors come October 31.
Founded earlier this year by former PokerStars Vice President of Marketing Dan Goldman and developed by Advanced Global Applications, Fleet Street Games.com opened for freeplay in August, switching to real money operations in September and attracting a positive response from the market.
Unfortunately, it was not sufficiently positive to withstand the economic storms that started raging in mid-October, and the company has announced that it will be shutting down operations at midnight on Friday, October 31.
In a note on the website, management advises that: “When we launched Fleet Street Games, we fully expected that we could weather a reasonable amount of time until we had the volume of players we needed to make the company viable. But as a result of the chaotic economy, things changed, and we had to make a very tough decision.”
The notification continues: “When FleetStreetGames closes, all unused paid membership fees will be refunded to your account. All of these funds and any winnings currently in your account can be cashed out via the website after the card room closes or can be used in part for purchasing discounted membership periods for PokerSchoolOnline. Until then you can use the cashier as normal.
“Please note that cashouts are going to take longer than normal because the volume of cashouts is very high right now.”
The operator anticipates two to four weeks will be required to finalize accounting and payout issues, provided subscribers get their claims in before the end of November. Fleet Street’s $15 fee on transactions of less than $50 is being waived.
The management sensibly addressed the question of the security of subscribers’ personal information: “All documents supplied to us are stored on our secured servers. This information will be used to send 1099 forms to both the IRS and to you. This will occur in January of 2009. Once we have processed your 1099 form, we will then delete the files from our system.”
Poker School Online, an associated poker educational and training facility, is to remain open for business, and Fleet Street members with less than $15 remaining in their accounts will be awarded memberships in Poker School Online in lieu of a refund.
It is good that they took a prudent business decision in advance of failure so that they could pay out to all players.
But reading this suggests that they gave it less than two months from start of “playing to subscription” to closing down?! obviously undercapitalised …
:Cry:
