Casino City's iGaming Pocket Directory - 2019 Edition

69 Sponsored by Poker Visit iGamingPocketDirectory.com for more information. OKER Poker INDuSTrY oVerVIeW According to Poker Industry Pro, across the four largest public online poker operators, revenue grew by 5.6% in 2017, thanks “largely to the continued investment by GVC into its resurgent partypoker platform and the stabilization of online poker at The Stars Group.” over the first two quarters of 2018, Poker Industry Pro reported an “explosion in live poker by online poker’s largest companies,” with both PokerStars and partypoker announcing landmark events for 2018. kindred reported in July 2018 that its unibet Poker product is “the fastest-growing licensed poker network in the industry,” and credited the “interplay between live and online events.” kindred’s unibet open live poker series, set in Malta with over 1,000 entrants, complemented the unibet online Series, which drew a total of 25,000 entrants across 84 different online tournaments. In europe, the Swedish government adopted a bill that “re-regulated” the market beginning January 1, and a regulatory liberalization is also on course in the Netherlands. As always, product innovation has also played a role in online poker’s resurgence. The Stars Group pointed to a new loyalty program introduced in early 2017 that awarded players daily rather than monthly or annually. Partypoker reported that it simply took player feedback to heart and ended its policy of charging inactive accounts a monthly fee, while at the same time it upgraded its menu of games, adding more daily tournaments nearly around the clock. Similarly, 888 began experimenting with new games like Push or Fold Flopomania, a format it said attracts a wider collection of players of all different skill levels. A new concept that became popular in 2018 was the adoption of the blind lobby, which has been referred to as Seat Me or AutoSeat at popular poker rooms. under this system, players choose the game and stake and are then automatically sent to an available seat, instead of being shown a complete list of available games or seats. If no seat is immediately available, players placed on a global waiting list. In an environment where building liquidity is difficult, finding ways to keep players depositing and playing on the sites is critical for operators. While in the past, major european jurisdictions have “ring-fenced” their players, preventing them from playing in a shared poker pool, that has changed in recent years. In 2017, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal signed an agreement that opened the gates of online poker’s borders, allowing players to intermingle and the online markets and as a result have benefited greatly from shared liquidity.