INTERVIEW
“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.”
volume affiliated players. I think they will
move away from this model where they can.
This will leave existing affiliates looking
to compete over smaller operators or over
smaller niches that the largest operators
have not already filled. The alternative is for
affiliates to bring a different type of player.
Sites today are often more interested in
bringing in casual players that they can keep
for longer.
Where are the opportunities
for poker affiliates in 2014?
There are still plenty of unexploited
markets and demographics. Poker players
aren’t all 21 and male – a maturing market
means wider spread acceptance of the game.
Poker can be sold to a wider audience than it
currently is, and sites that are interested
in keeping newer players alive longer can
profit from this.
Gamification is slowly coming in to poker
with MPN, Party and PokerStars.net among
the operators bringing in achievements.
But one of the first attempts at this was
the affiliate PTR running an achievement
promotion in early 2011. The types of
innovations that some operators are making
today can be replicated by affiliates too.
harder to develop well. Our tablet
product will launch shortly after the
desktop and we are sure revenues
will grow as a result.
Do you think that diversification is key
in the current market, and that poker
affiliates could and should seek to expand
the products they promote?
What other trends do you see affecting the
iGaming market in general over the next
12 months?
The advantage of diversification is reduced
risk, but the disadvantage is the loss of
specialisation. The biggest successes in the
poker operator market have been earned by
those operators that specialise.
How important is the focus on
mobile for affiliates in today’s market,
and how is Unibet engaging the
mobile space in 2014?
We all expect mobile and tablet market
share to increase in 2014 but I think this will
focus more on tablet than mobile for poker.
Sportsbook and casino do not need to display
as much information as a poker game does,
which makes mobile applications much
Customers in land-based sportsbooks are
ageing. How are online operators going to
take advantage of this? Offline brand names
lose their relative value every year they do not
have similar success online. Will online-only
operators take more market share? New
markets are appearing, particularly with
poker in the US. Are poker operators going
to use this an excuse to maintain the status
quo in the global player pools?
Finally, what sort of strategies should new-tomarket affiliates be adopting to ensure they
are competitive?
Find a niche and get to know everything
about it. Where are poker ope