Those who pay attention to the stock market know that things aren’t exactly going well for most industries.  And because of the falling stocks, many businesses and companies are seeing their shares lose considerable value.  Unfortunately, the poker industry hasn’t been void of this problem and they’re struggling right now just like everyone else.

One place where this downward trend can definitely be seen is at PartyGaming (owner of Party Poker) as their stocks are only worth about one-third of what they were a year ago.  But if PartyGaming thought they were doing bad then they should take a look at what has happened to World Poker Tour Enterprises.  The WPTE opened this year with a stock price of $1.65 a share.  However, their online poker room crumbled over the summer and their TV deal with FSN is not as rich as the one with GSN was.  Now their stocks are sitting at just 36 cents a share.

Trouble has also hit a lot of the major poker software developers with Playtech and CryptoLogic suffering some pretty heavy losses.  At one point this year, Playtech was up over $700 a share but now it is mired at about $400 a share.  CryptoLogic has fared much worse since they opened the year at $17.46 a share but have free-fallen to $2.31 a share.

Now I’m sure the falling stocks of a few major companies won’t destroy the poker industry, however, this is a pretty disturbing trend.  I guess it just shows how closely the worldwide economy and online poker are tied together.  If people don’t have the money to play poker with, then they obviously aren’t going to be hitting up too many online rooms.  Hopefully things will start getting better soon.