date 22 August 2019 update Upd: 11 April 2023 reading time 5 min views 259 views

It’s nearly impossible to find any data on how fast and how steady poker rooms grow. We have decided to fill this gap, and now showing you the real growth in poker integrated into the third-party casino and sports betting platform. Spoiler: it does affect the overall revenue and with the proper marketing campaigns demonstrates a rapid increase in players’ number and revenue.

Online Poker Integration: Why and How?

If you already have a successful online sports betting, casino, or esports project, why would you want to consider online poker integration? Of course, having more options for the players is always better. But online poker is not so simple to integrate and manage as slots or most popular casino games, and one should have really good reasons to invest into the online poker software.

And there is one that beats many cons. Players loyalty and retention. Unlike slots and football bets, once you find a good place and nice audience to play poker, chances are high that you will return to the same operator every once and a while. Although online poker players are not counted in millions usually, their retention guarantees that you get good revenue.

Here at EvenBet Gaming, we have a very positive experience of poker integration into the existing platforms. Our poker server has refined and powerful API that supports nearly all modern technology platforms. The integration itself may be performed by both EvenBet and the customer’s team. Over the years, we have been working with casinos, fantasy and cybersports, esports, and online betting enterprises. In each case, adding online poker brought notable benefits.

Integration Case: The Customer

Recently, we have integrated our online poker platform with web HTML5 client application into the successful sports betting website. The customer had many years of experience in offline and online sports betting and had been already providing many casino games to create extra value to online users.
They have been looking for the new gaming products that would help to increase the time spent in the service and players’ lifetime value.

The integration with the existing platform, with seamless wallet and user database, took a few months including customisation of the client app design and testing.

How Did It Work

After the integration and the testing, the customer was running several promotions – mainly, for the existing players using sports betting and casino games in the project. They have provided us all the main statistical data on user database, profit, and activity growth for 9 months.

This information is commercially sensitive so may neither name the customer nor give the information on the currency used to play. However, the numbers over time, even if not that specific, are still valuable.

Monthly room profit

This graph shows the changes in rake earned in the poker application.

rake growth

Reasons for the numbers to change: overall user database growth over time (even without big promotions or increasing the number of freerolls and prizes in freerolls); promotions (April); seasonal changes (a slight decrease in summer).

The data on deposits almost exactly double this graph.

Besides that, in summer the operator has started measuring the whole ecosystem impact of poker application using the special algorithm. Starting in July, the overall impact on the project’s profit was 15-25% higher than the rake earned due to the increased time spent on the website, retention, and LTV.

Users numbers

Although cash flow decreased in summer, the number of active players wasn’t that much affected by the season. They were making fewer deposits, but the numbers of active, new, and (what’s the most important) lapsed players were only growing over time.

users number

Reasons for that: after the seasonal fall in May, the operator has decided to run more freerolls – see the numbers’ leap in June. The revenue they got from rake in the cash games allowed the poker application to be still profitable even with the increased spending on prizes.

Games specific data

number of hands played

One may notice that the major amount of users is playing micro limit and low limit hands. However, after the promotions and freerolls campaigns, the number of hands played at 0.10-0.50 limit has started to grow rapidly – and so did rake received from these games.

What does that show? The growing trust and the loyalty of players. Isn’t that what we are looking for when we think of poker integration?