Playtech has claimed its “new poker liquidity programme” which saw its iPoker network split into two player pools from September, is already paying dividends for its top licensees.
“Our Tier 1 partners are reporting a strong increase in revenue, and overall activity in the network has grown significantly”, said CEO Mor Weizer in yesterday’s Q3 earnings call. “We anticipate that such a network will prove attractive to our poker licensees and address some of the pressing issues that the poker industry faces.”
Weizer added that the new poker liquidity programme, “to ensure a better environment for our licensees and their players by incentivising them to further invest into the poker product”, had proved instrumental in attracting Betclic Everest to move its main poker brands to the network. The migration last week resulted in a near 15% rise in iPoker’s dot.com cash game traffic in the first six days, according to Pokerscout.
“I’m happy to say this initiative did not go unnoticed by well-established operators such as Betclic-Everest, as well as other well-established operators that Playtech is in discussions with. We expect to announce additional licensees in due course. We expect this new equilibrium created within the network will further attract more licensees,” he said.
With Betclic-Everest’s main poker brands, Betclic and Everest Poker, joining bet365, Paddy Power, Titan, Poker770 and Winner Poker on the top tier of iPoker, the Playtech chief said he was confident this strategy would allow Playtech to eventually grow back the poker business, revenues from which fell a massive 27% year-on-year to €4.1m in the three months to the end of September.
“We will be first focused on stabilising it before growing it obviously, but we definitely believe we are in a unique position. Unlike operators who have to decide where to put their marketing money, we obviously enjoy the fact the new equilibrium created within the network incentivises them to invest more in poker from their marketing perspective, which we will benefit from.
“But I believe we are [also] in a unique position because we are not just dependent on the marketing spend by various licensees, we can always grow the business and enjoy incremental revenues from new licensees. If you take, for example, Gala Coral joining the network, and Betclic-Everest, which will make a significant contribution given they are very much focused on poker, then definitely I see an upside for Playtech. As I have indicated, this new equilibrium, the quality of the liquidity will attract more licensees.”
Weizer emphasised that Playtech still saw “poker as a significant and important element and segment of the business, and we do expect to grow it in the medium, longer term.”
Betclic-Everest’s main poker brands, Betclic and Everest Poker, joined bet365, Paddy Power, Titan, Poker770 and Winner Poker on the top tier of iPoker, followng the segregation of operators’ players on its iPoker network into two groups based on a network performance scoring mechanism, assessed on a monthly basis. Several smaller skins on iPoker have either merged operations with larger skins or closed down their poker rooms as a result of being relegated to the grinder-heavy lower tier, the most recent being SunPoker, which closed its poker room on Monday.
Article written by Stephen Carter
