Can PokerStars make it big in social casino?

“We anticipate social gaming will be an important growth opportunity for the company,” David Baazov, CEO of Amaya Gaming, said at the time of its $4.9bn acquisition of PokerStars owner the Rational Group in June.

The Canadian chief exec was careful not to promise too many changes to a company already dominating the online poker world, but a move into social gaming – which he labelled as one of four growth initiatives which also included the launch of casino and evenutally sports betting – is one which caught the sector’s attention.

PokerStars’ social casino product PokerStars Play has been active in beta on Facebook for over 18 months as the firm tested and modified its social offering prior to an official full launch in August. But as yet the marketing tap has remained somewhat turned off.

Its potential is clear, so much so that some are even tipping it to be the biggest challenger yet to Zynga Poker’s dominance, however this is a sector which has proved tricky for real-money firms to conquer and success is not guaranteed.

“They’ve been working on it for a long time but there’s been so much stuff happening since the acquisition, including going multi-vertical, that it’s becoming harder for them to find the talent and people to get the product right,” Raf Keustermans, CEO of Plumbee, says.

“But they are serious about it and I think the fact that a company that size has been investing and experimenting in it for a few years and still committed shows how serious it is about social,” he adds.

Challenging for the top spot

The real-money online gambling market in the US has been slower to regulate, as well as grow in the already legalised states, than some may have expected and with the right expertise and money in the bank, social poker could well be a solid bet for PokerStars.

“With PokerStars, entering social kind of fits because they’ve built their apps and products themselves and are in much more control of their development streams,” Rick Brownlow, CEO of social gambling firm Bonza Gaming, says.

But PokerStars is still clearly a long way off from knocking Zynga off its perch at the top of the social poker ladder. According to app analytics firm metricsmonk, the PokerStars Play app has failed to demonstrate any growth in recent months, with its number of monthly active users (MAU) stubbornly hovering just above 100,000.

Zynga Poker, on the other hand, can boast a player base of MAU approximately 17m, according to data firm dystillr, although this is a substantial decline compared to 24m in the same period last year.

“Yes, from a brand perspective and financial backing [PokerStars could certainly challenge Zynga Poker],” Adam Krejcik, a managing director at Eilers Research, says.

But even with the right team in place and a high-quality product, the competitiveness of the social casino market means even world-renowned brands like PokerStars need to make a significant investment in marketing and acquisition to achieve any kind of meaningful position.

“Also, even though PokerStars is the leader in real-money online poker, the game mechanics and specifically monetisation features for social differ to real-money,” Krejcik says. “In other words you cannot simply just take the same real-money game and transport it to social and expect it to be successful.”

PokerStars is currently on the hunt for a new director of social gaming, following the departure of Mark Buser earlier this year, and the brief will also include growing the company’s social app on mobile, an area Zynga has famously struggled in.

It seems the Isle of Man-based operator is not quite there yet. “Despite already having a decent product, it’s ready for a full attack on the other players in the market and probably still need to fine tune certain things,” Keustermands adds.

But if the group is as serious about social as Baazov has said and is willing to invest the resources requried, there is certainly no reason it can’t become one of the leaders in the sector.