Poker Clubs Business Model: Reasons for Success

The iGaming market is expected to be worth more than 92.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. According to Statista of 03/2022, the market size reached almost 59 billion U.S. dollars, and it’s anticipated to double in the upcoming years.

The reasons for such rapid extension are the following:

• improvement of technology available, i.e. smartphones, apps;
• ease and more considerable trust in payment systems;
• growing global digitalisation, and more.

Online poker players are among the fastest developing communities within the industry. More people these days unite to play online poker in their private clubs. Others make it a business. How?

How Poker Club Business Model Works 

A poker club is a community of players who play online poker with each other using the club’s chips bought in-app via the internet store.

The poker club business model has a certain hierarchy. On top of it is a poker club app owner of a mobile application available in the stores. Anyone can download the app, create their own club to become a poker club owner, or join an existing one. A poker club union owner aims to connect poker clubs. Poker club owners link to the app managed by an app owner and can unite their players with the other poker clubs’ players inside the union. Poker club owners can hire agents who attract traffic and work with users.  

App Owner, Poker Club Owner, Union Owner: Responsibilities 

App Owner

The app owner defines the monetary policy, unlike the classical poker room business model, where the operator does everything and has more management responsibilities. The poker club business is a sort of multi-level marketing and direct sales in the poker niche.

Responsibilities: 

• Determines the cost of in-game purchases;
• Due to the full access to CRM, manages the entire game database; 
• Not involved in creating games and motivating players, therefore doesn’t work with end-users. 

Poker Club Owner

Responsibilities: 

• Attracts traffic and players either themselves or via agents; 
• Creates engaging conditions for users to play;
• Defines tournament buy-ins, setups club games, and tournaments (the games played solely in the club.

Union Owner

A Union is an association of clubs. The primary goal of a union is to increase liquidity, therefore to benefit more. Union Owner is usually the owner of the biggest club, the most experienced manager, who how to schedule tables & tourneys to make everybody like them and play more.  

Responsibilities:

• Comes up with a schedule of games and tournaments between the clubs;
• Regulates relations between incoming club owners;
• Balances schedule: a union can have games for the whole union, but poker club owners can create their own games and tournament schedules. So the task of the union owner is to stabilise all the processes.

Reasons for Success: Why People Love Playing in Poker Clubs 

The poker club business model appeared in Asia where poker for real money is often prohibited. Though there are players who want to play with each other, win, and lose. What made poker clubs marketable?

1. Fun game perks and features

Poker in this model is predominantly seen as a recreational activity, purely for entertainment purposes where there are no professional players. It follows from this that interesting new fun game perks are born and tested in poker clubs.

Top EvenBet Gaming Poker Clubs Features

Rabbit Hunting is a feature that lets the dealer reveal to a player who purchases it what would have been the next cards dealt if a hand had continued.

Opening Statistics by players is usually a paid feature that opens additional figures and information. The data on how many hands were played and VPIP (voluntary put money into the pot, tells us how often a user puts in money given the opportunity). 

It’s possible to purchase extra statistics where the following indicators are available:

• PFR (preflop raiser, shows how many hands a player raises on the first betting round), 
• WTSD (went to showdown, how often a player goes to showdown after seeing a flop), 
• W$SD (won money at showdown, the percentage of the time you win the pot after showdown), 
• 3-BET (the 3rd bet in a poker sequence, in which a player re-raises after the opening pre-flop raise), 
• FOLD TO 3-BET (a measure of how often an opener folds when they have been 3Bet), 
• C-BET (A continuation bet, a bet made by a user who made the last aggressive action on the previous street), 
• AFQ (aggression frequency, indicated the percentage of a player’s non-checking actions that are aggressive on a given street, or in general). 

Real-time results on the table are shown live, you can see a list of players with win/loss stats. This feature can be turned off. Someone likes open results, someone hidden. In the hidden mode, players will not see the results, but owners will. 

VIP cards include features and privileges.

2. Legitimacy 

Simplicity and legitimacy for application owners. All in-app purchases and all payments go through the official Apple Store, Google Store, and Huawei Store.

3. Low entry barrier

For poker club owners the barrier to entry is low. A poker club is elementary to set up. No primary costs are needed. The club can already be launched with just 10-25 players. Legal entertaining poker for everyone. 

Conclusion

With vast experience in developing poker club solutions, EvenBet Gaming is willing to provide you with a top-notch iGaming solution with highly appreciated features by players. Contact us to start your own successful poker club business.