The poker market is not large enough to accommodate the number of sites trying to make a living from it, especially if it keeps fragmenting as the countries of Europe and the states of the USA introduce their own regulations one after the other, creating segregated markets – even though they have been proven to be unsustainable in the long run.
The combined 7-day average cash game traffic of the top 50 operators worldwide has been about 53,300 players, of which 23,000 (or 43%) have been playing at a single site, PokerStars. According to renowned poker traffic monitoring site PokerScout, Another total of 17,150 players have frequented the 2nd-10th ranking rooms, which include the Italian, Spanish and French skins of PS, as well as Rational Group owned Full Tilt Poker.
It goes without saying that even the top 10 sites and networks have to increase their liquidity to survive on the market and a reasonable addition to their portfolio are casino games; in fact, several skins had offered slots, card games and roulette before poker and even more of them, most notably rooms with a tradition in the United Kingdom, have expanded their operations to poker from sports betting.
To see sports books and casino operators also present on the online poker market, go to the Onlinecasinos’s guide; you will find the likes of Bet365, one of the most renowned sports betting companies of the UK and a popular provider of poker, casino and bingo services. Bet365 has a strong presence on several markets and has always been a sports book above all; however, casino and poker offerings opened the way for it in areas otherwise relatively uninterested in their main focus of its operations.
Other noteworthy examples include Betsson and sister room Betsafe: while the player pools of the Ongame (25th, 350 7-day average) and Microgaming (12th, 1,150 7-day average) networks are available at both, poker makes up a mere 6% of their net income. In comparison, 67% of their profits come from casino games and 23% from sports betting operations. MyBet, a first tier skin of the 3rd largest operator iPoker network (2,300 7-day average), has an even heavier emphasis on sports betting: 41.4% of their total profits are earned on the market, while their casino and poker services make up a total of 28.2%. The casino site of Microgaming’s Unibet produces 42% of the income of the company, followed by 39% from sports betting and only 9% from poker.
Why do multi-profile companies maintain their poker offerings and even invest large sums into lucrative promotions and deals? Well, as hinted above, poker has a global reputation of being fun to play, exciting and giving a fair chance of anyone to win really big. This way, operators can expand to markets where other forms of online gaming are not well established, due to either their reputation (as opposed to poker, casino games tend to be viewed as pure gambling) or the lack of a wide range of domestic sports portfolio to bet on.
Also, the recent trend in the online poker world is that sites focus on recreational players, as they are the ones who can be won over by relatively cheap campaigns, and they are those, who can be kept long enough in the poker economy to increase liquidity – unlike high stakes professionals, who are only profitable for the rooms as long as they act as ambassadors and public faces for them. Since recreational players seek the fun of poker but are easily bored, the introduction of a variety of other gaming products can be effective in moving them from the poker tables to the slot machines and other games, where they generate much higher profits for the sites.
To what extent is this trend being followed by operators? Well, we have listed quite a few that have been pursuing these goals for long and, most recently, even the largest operators tend to realize their value. See, Rational Group has already confirmed its interest in the casino and sports betting market.
The combined 7-day average cash game traffic of the top 50 operators worldwide has been about 53,300 players, of which 23,000 (or 43%) have been playing at a single site, PokerStars. According to renowned poker traffic monitoring site PokerScout, Another total of 17,150 players have frequented the 2nd-10th ranking rooms, which include the Italian, Spanish and French skins of PS, as well as Rational Group owned Full Tilt Poker.
It goes without saying that even the top 10 sites and networks have to increase their liquidity to survive on the market and a reasonable addition to their portfolio are casino games; in fact, several skins had offered slots, card games and roulette before poker and even more of them, most notably rooms with a tradition in the United Kingdom, have expanded their operations to poker from sports betting.
To see sports books and casino operators also present on the online poker market, go to the Onlinecasinos’s guide; you will find the likes of Bet365, one of the most renowned sports betting companies of the UK and a popular provider of poker, casino and bingo services. Bet365 has a strong presence on several markets and has always been a sports book above all; however, casino and poker offerings opened the way for it in areas otherwise relatively uninterested in their main focus of its operations.
Other noteworthy examples include Betsson and sister room Betsafe: while the player pools of the Ongame (25th, 350 7-day average) and Microgaming (12th, 1,150 7-day average) networks are available at both, poker makes up a mere 6% of their net income. In comparison, 67% of their profits come from casino games and 23% from sports betting operations. MyBet, a first tier skin of the 3rd largest operator iPoker network (2,300 7-day average), has an even heavier emphasis on sports betting: 41.4% of their total profits are earned on the market, while their casino and poker services make up a total of 28.2%. The casino site of Microgaming’s Unibet produces 42% of the income of the company, followed by 39% from sports betting and only 9% from poker.
Why do multi-profile companies maintain their poker offerings and even invest large sums into lucrative promotions and deals? Well, as hinted above, poker has a global reputation of being fun to play, exciting and giving a fair chance of anyone to win really big. This way, operators can expand to markets where other forms of online gaming are not well established, due to either their reputation (as opposed to poker, casino games tend to be viewed as pure gambling) or the lack of a wide range of domestic sports portfolio to bet on.
Also, the recent trend in the online poker world is that sites focus on recreational players, as they are the ones who can be won over by relatively cheap campaigns, and they are those, who can be kept long enough in the poker economy to increase liquidity – unlike high stakes professionals, who are only profitable for the rooms as long as they act as ambassadors and public faces for them. Since recreational players seek the fun of poker but are easily bored, the introduction of a variety of other gaming products can be effective in moving them from the poker tables to the slot machines and other games, where they generate much higher profits for the sites.
To what extent is this trend being followed by operators? Well, we have listed quite a few that have been pursuing these goals for long and, most recently, even the largest operators tend to realize their value. See, Rational Group has already confirmed its interest in the casino and sports betting market.
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