888Poker and FlowESports Partner Up in Twitch Deal

888Poker is partnering up with FlowEsports in a deal that could expose the online poker brand to the rapidly growing esports market via a game called Hearthstone.
The deal, which was announced on 888Poker’s official blog, revolves around members of the FloweSports team as they play Hearthstone, an online card game with more than 40 million active users.
In a synergistic twist, several members of the team are already accomplished professional poker players. Daniel Märkisch and Johannes Steindl both participated in this year’s Series of Poker Circuit Event in Rozvadov, Czech Republic. Märkisch finished out the tournament in 20th place and walked away with 9,459 EUR ($10,208 USD).
Other members of the team play poker at various levels and are participating in the 888Poker deal.
As part of the arrangement, FlowEsports members will also broadcast their online poker play via Twitch at least once a week. All team members already broadcast their Hearthstone play on a daily basis.
888Poker is betting that the massive Hearthstone player pool is also hiding a massive harvest of online poker players. After all, both are card games and success in both games revolves around forcing your opponent to deplete his or her resources.
The eSports market is growing at an incredibly rapid rate with anticipated 2016 revenue of up to $436 million from the professional side alone. When ancillary markets, such as esports gambling, are factored into the mix, that number jumps well over the $1 billion mark. About a quarter of all revenue generated from esports emanates from the Asian market.
This isn’t, however, the first time that an online poker shop has teamed up with an esports team. PokerStars has a similar arrangement with a different Hearthstone team.