Poker is seeing a new period of prosperity that many in the industry could have never foreseen. Players old and new are flocking to online services, and rediscovering a great game to pass the time while gambling a few bucks. Our Becky Liggero Fontana caught up with Jonas Odman, CEO of Rising Sun Media, to discuss the trends he’s seeing in the vertical, as well as some great tips regardless of how to keep these players around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20XfroolpMo&feature=youtu.beVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Jonas Odman expects the current poker renaissance to leave lasting returns (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20XfroolpMo&feature=youtu.be)
“This pandemic has certainly had a very positive effect on the number of poker players online for sportsbooks and in general, they usually use sports events to acquire new players,” Odman said. “They say, if next week Liverpool is playing Athletica Madrid, you bet on the outcome, etc. Now they confuse that, because there are no sports. And poker, however, with poker you have your big tournaments and they have become a lot bigger recently, so you can advertise that. We see a lot more traffic for online poker and it’s also used for acquisition a lot more than two months ago.”
Liggero Fontana asked Odman to describe what kinds of players he sees returning. “It’s definitely a mix of our players who’ve stopped playing and who have come back now, and they probably would have kept their account with the sports book,” he said. “Now they can’t do anything on the sports side, they can play online casino games of course, and online casino is also, you’re doing well right now. But they are also coming back to the poker, and there’s definitely or an influx of new players coming in. And a third group, which is the live, the poker players who like to play live poker, because there are no live tournaments right now. If you look at the last 10 years, the online poker industry has been on a slow decline I’d say, different reasons, but in general, live poker is done really well. The World Series of Poker has set new records every year.”