A poker network just opened its doors to rivals, and the tables are rented now

What the poker network actually opened#

The fox does not build a den on every hill. It borrows a good burrow when the burrow is better than anything it could dig, and it knows exactly what the loan costs. That patient prowl is the right way to read this week's news, because Flutter's PokerStars has launched a B2B site inviting outside operators to join the PokerStars Network, the shared player pool it had so far used only to merge its own poker brands, per Bitcoin.com News.

The pitch is plain. Partners get access to shared tables and tournaments such as the Sunday Million and Spin & Go, European Poker Tour branding, and white-label, co-brand or franchise arrangements. PokerStars' own site tells prospective partners they gain instant access to the largest and most engaged poker community, with more than six million followers across 140 countries. Bitcoin.com adds that the site claims 12 licences, more than 130 countries and over 3 million players. Those are the operator's own claims, and they read as claims until a partner sees the contract.

The move did not come from nowhere. Betfair Poker joined the shared pool on 13 August, with Paddy Power and Sky Poker due to follow, and PokerStars' chief commercial officer Mike Woodbridge said a patchwork of regulations has fragmented the global game. Fragmentation is a regulator's word, but for a marketer it means smaller pools in every market and thinner tables at every hour.

• 13 Aug

  when Betfair Poker joined the shared pool

• 3m+

  players the network site claims, per Bitcoin.com

• 6m+

  followers across 140 countries, per PokerStars' partner site

• $120m

  Q2 restructuring and integration cost at Flutter

• $300m

  annualised saving expected from the PokerStars integration

None of this is new as a model. Pokerfuse notes that partner skins are a model used by practically every major online poker network, and that GGPoker has arguably perfected it. GGPoker already tells partners such as Danske Spil they can offer players record-breaking tournaments and weekly series. What is new is that the biggest brand in the game now wants to sell the same thing.

Why shared liquidity is an acquisition product#

Liquidity is the one feature poker players cannot see and cannot live without. Full tables at the right stakes at midnight are the product, and a poker network is a machine for making them full. That is why it belongs in a marketing conversation, not only a technology one: an operator with thin tables pays twice, once to acquire the player and again to lose them.

The evidence for the acquisition effect is older than this week's news. When France, Portugal and Spain shared poker pools, regulators reported that players preferred tables and tournaments with shared pools over national ones. The original deal was signed by the French, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian regulators on 6 July 2017, and Ontario's Court of Appeal later confirmed the province can let its players share tables with international players while not automatically linking to other provinces. Treat the rules as texture. The growth lesson is that players choose the fuller room.

Peer-reviewed work adds a useful twist. A survey study of 719 players in International Gambling Studies found that consumers prefer networks to grow while they are small, but want more focus on the types of players added as a network grows. In marketing terms, raw size wins early and player mix wins later, which is exactly the point where a partner brand's own acquisition quality starts to matter.

Flutter's own numbers show the pooling effect and its cost#

Flutter's Q2 results show the effect in revenue. Its SEA segment grew 36 per cent, with an 8-percentage point benefit from PokerStars customer migrations. The cost side is just as concrete. Card Player reports the second quarter carried $120 million in additional restructuring and integration costs against $300 million of annualised savings expected from the integration by the end of the year.

There is a marketing reading of that ledger. A partner that joins a shared poker network skips most of the capital cost of building liquidity, and pays instead in rake share, brand terms and dependence. The trade is fair only if the partner's marketing turns the borrowed tables into an owned customer relationship.

The traffic picture, and why it needs a caveat#

Every network pitch leans on online poker traffic, so read the number carefully. On 22 September, PokerStrategy reported PokerScout figures of 9,292 active cash game players at GGPoker and 2,479 at PokerStars, with 2,285 at CoinPoker and 173 on the iPoker network. The metric, cash players currently seated at ring game tables, is the industry's usual yardstick, though the live PokerScout page does not archive the 22 September snapshot.

Two caveats keep the chart honest. First, this is one day's snapshot of one tracker, relayed second-hand. Second, a rival tracker's own note warns that cash-game analysis reflects occupied seats at the table, not unique players. That makes poker traffic a proxy for liquidity, not a headcount, and a partner should ask which measure a network's sales deck is using.

The gap explains the pitch. Bitcoin.com notes the launch arrives with the brand trailing GGPoker on cash traffic, and the one partner success story offered is a sister company, Sisal, whose poker revenue reportedly rose more than 50 per cent after switching. Read that as a Flutter-family case study, which is useful evidence but not yet independent proof that outside brands will see the same lift.

Meanwhile the older network is quiet. An iPoker network figure of 173 cash players on the day is a reminder that networks lose members as well as gain them, and that Betfair, Sky Poker and Paddy Power Poker are leaving it, as PokerStrategy notes. For a supplier or affiliate, a shrinking pool is a signal to ask where the demand is heading next.

What marketing looks like when the tables are rented#

If liquidity is shared, liquidity cannot be your point of difference. What remains is everything a player meets before and after the table: the brand, the welcome, the loyalty programme, the payment experience and the way you speak to a lapsed player. That is where a partner's marketing budget belongs, and it is the reverse of the usual instinct to boast about traffic.

That post, one of dozens across poker media this week, captures the offer in a sentence. It also shows what a partner is really buying: a set of shared events and a shared pool, with the marketing left to the brand that plugs in.

The fourth move rewards a moment of thought. Because mix matters, a partner that buys cheap, low-value traffic may fill chairs in the short run and damage the network's economics in the long run, which is a conversation every affiliate and media buyer should expect from a network operator. Quality of acquisition becomes a commercial asset, not merely a compliance nicety.

Questions to ask before you join a poker network#

Published detail on partner terms is thin, so the honest move is to list the questions rather than guess the answers. The checklist below is folkfox's own editorial checklist for an operator, affiliate or supplier weighing an offer from any poker network. It is not sourced fact, and no network has published its answers.

The list is deliberately ordinary. The great danger with any shared-liquidity offer is that the excitement of full tables crowds out the dull questions about data, exclusivity and exit, which are the questions that decide whether the brand is still worth owning in three years.

For a wider read on how a sportsbook or casino brand can win when it does not own the whole product, see folkfox's pieces on Sky Vegas building a brand that cannot be switched off and on a sportsbook brand entering Ontario. The same growth logic sits behind folkfox iGaming marketing, backed by PPC that respects each market's rules, content marketing that turns shared events into local stories, and brand strategy that makes a rented table feel like yours.

Set the baseline before any signature. Record your current cost per first-time depositor, deposit quality and thirty-day retention by source, so a network's promised lift can be compared with something real. A partner that cannot show its own baseline will struggle to prove that liquidity, not luck, moved the number.

Expect the early signs to appear in retention before revenue. A fuller table lifts session length and repeat play, and only later does it show up in the headline. Measure the boring metrics first, because a poker network rewards the brand that reads them and forgives the brand that only reads the press release.

Frequently asked questions#