March 24, 2010 (CAP Newswire) – As most online poker affiliate marketers know, trends in the Internet poker business have changed a lot over the past decade. Although today’s online poker industry is dominated by big names like Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars today, a few years ago, it was a different story.
Blogging at EGR, Bodog CEO Patrik Selin backs this point up with numbers. Back in 1998, Planet Poker was the clear market leader, he writes, with 100 percent market share. In 2000, Paradise Poker led the crowd, and just five years ago in 2005, it was PartyPoker that was the online poker industry’s biggest brand.
Things are considerably different now, as Selin’s list of the industry’s top five poker affiliate programs demonstrates:
1) PokerStars, which has around 40% market share
2) Full Tilt, which has around 20%
3) PartyPoker, around 6.5% marketshare
4) iPoker, around 5.9%, and…
5) Bwin, which has around 3.5%.
What’s this mean for online poker affiliate marketing? Although the biggest online poker brands are the most popular poker affiliate programs, choosing to promote other sites is a good idea, since online poker players’ tastes fluctuate, and the industry leaders tend to switch places somewhat regularly.
It also demonstrates the use of political action. Because most of the recent fluctuations in the online poker industry are a result of government regulations, particularly in the U.S., supporting legislation that would allow legalized online poker would change the playing field all over again. And it’s probably healthy for the poker affiliate world to have a marketplace where so many different brands are competing for players.
“Who will be leading the race in the future I can’t predict, but what I can say is that complacency is your worst enemy in this industry,” Selin writes. “And those of us who are new, flexible, hungry and well-funded are coming to take advantage.” Read Selin’s original blog post here.