INTERVIEW
STAGNATION
IN THE POKER
MARKET
To discuss the stagnation of the online poker market, and its impact on the affiliate sector, iGB Affiliate
speaks to Daniel Eskola, Head of Gaming at Unibet.
The online poker market has suffered
another challenging year in 2013. How
would you describe the market at present?
It’s been a challenging market for several
years now. PokerScout indicates that it
has fallen 11 percent in the past year, four
percent the year before that and 31 percent
the year before that. The market has
stagnated with few innovations since Rush
in 2010 and Expresso last year. It is a good
time to take advantage of the stagnation by
launching an innovative product that is built
for 2014 instead of 2004.
To what do you attribute its current state?
What trends and market forces have
conspired to impact the sector?
Stagnating markets need innovation to
recover. The main exception to the market
contraction has been the Rational Group
which has remained fairly stable since Black
Friday. It has an effective monopoly with
60 percent global market share, so there is
little motivation for the company to disrupt
the status quo. Most operators have other
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iGB Affiliate FEBRUARY/MARCH 2014
priorities with their sportsbooks and casinos
so they are also unlikely to change. 888 and
Winamax have been the greatest innovators
of the past few years and their success
is well known.
Many within the industry recognise that
life is getting harder for the less experienced
players, but there is too little being done
How challenging has this period
been for the affiliate sector specifically?
The Rational Group is well known for its
minimal use of affiliates in areas it can
already market directly in. The company’s
takeover of the market can only be a bad
thing for the affiliate industry as it existed a
few years ago.
“Many within the industry recognise that life is getting
harder for the less experienced players, but there is too
little being done about it.”
about it. We feel that the time is right to
go a step further and commit more fully to
the idea of concentrating on those players
instead of those with HUDs, trackers and
auto-join scripts.
Our forthcoming standalone client will
not allow any of those programmes and
partly as a result will bring fun back into
poker. Achievements, missions, graphics
from this decade instead of last and
promotions that a normal player can take
part in will also help.
There are fewer new players to attract and
the old players that are interested in moving
sites are often only interested in doing so
for better rakeback deals with lower affiliate
margin. This is very bad news for the 2008era affiliate model.
How can affiliates maintain their poker
revenue in 2014, and what are the best
ways for them to do this?
Many operators are realising they are not
making money from some of their high