eGaming Review March 2013 | Page 44

POWER 50 AFFILIATES FEATURE POKERPT.COM Founder/Principal: Joao Manuel Nunes, Nuno Rocha Domains: More than 40, including pokerpt.com and poker10.com PokerPT averages more than one million unique visits per month across its network of sites. Recently agreed a landmark deal with media group Prisa, which will see the Iberian-focused affiliate run gambling sections for newspapers AS and El Pais. Plans to increase Portuguese presence and expand into South America in 2013. CASINO LATEST CASINO BONUSES Founder/Principal: Nik Zugic; Joshua Chan Domains: POKER POKERSTRATEGY.COM Founder/Principal: Dominik Kofert, founder; Damian Sokol, CEO Domains: PokerStrategy.com, with sub-domains for 19 languages Has ended agreements with major partners including bwin.party but remains a dominant force in the sector with a higher poker gross rake than many operators. Parent company etruvian has branched into ?nancial trading through tradimo community. NEW LatestBingoBonuses.com; LatestPokerBonuses.com; LatestSportsBonuses.com; BingoReviewer.co.uk Branching out into other verticals alongside a ?agship site with more than eight million page views a month. US customers up in raw numbers but down as a percentage after growth in other territories. POKERVIP Founder/Principal: Jamie Nevin Domains: PokerVIP.com, Pokercube. com, Pokertube.com, PokerUpdate. com, PokerDictionary.com Changed its name from iPokerVIP last year to emphasise growing number of sites to which it sends players. Followed rebrand with the acquisition of video and streaming site Pokertube, which it has revamped with a redesign and live event streaming. NIK ZUGIC C E O | L AT E S T C A S I N O B O N U S E S eGaming Review (eGR): You bring in a lot of traffic from the US. Has player trust in US-facing casinos been affected by the changing online poker landscape? Nik Zugic (NZ): We used to have more than 50% of US traffic. This has changed in the past year and a half and now is around 33%, although this is not a result of a decline in our own US traffic, it’s actually quite the opposite – we have gained more traffic in other regions which resulted in such change in percentages. Overall, our US traffic is still raising, which leads me to believe that the player trust in US facing casinos hasn’t been affected much by such turmoil and changes in the US market ever since the Black Friday and poker happenings. I’m sure that these changes have affected fair share of poker affiliates especially with plenty of US traffic. However, being that our main brand is focused on casinos, I can say that even with the original decline things have stabilised and are no longer declining. Sadly, US players are still faced with limited banking options and are often forced to jump through one too many hoops in order to make a deposit, especially when cashing out. This is of course affecting the trust they have in online gambling and I’m positive these numbers would be much greater if we had a regulated market in US. RAKEBACK.COM Founder/Principal: Mika Ollila Domains: Rakeback.com; Pokerbonus.com Exploring potential non-gambling ventures after a year of improved search rankings, while the company has also focused heavily on high-quality, targeted content creation. RAKETHERAKE.COM Founder/Principal: Karim Wilkins Domains: RakeTheRake. com; Rakeback.co.uk; PokerLoyaltyPrograms.com; EnglishPokerOpen.com Approaching a decade in the industry after launching in 2004. Brought back live showpiece English Poker Open after a year’s hiatus. 44 www.egrmagazine.com