888 and Caesars to pool liquidity in New Jersey
The All American Poker Network and the WSOP.com will share player pools but run independent marketing campaigns and bonus offers
888 has confirmed it has started pooling liquidity between its All American Poker Network (AAPN) and Caesars Interactive’s 888-powered WSOP.com site in New Jersey.
The network will see the AAPN and WSOP.com share player pools for the first time since launch in November last year, but each brand will continue to be run independently with separate marketing campaigns and promotions.
“Sharing liquidity will allow both WSOP and AAPN to increase guaranteed tournaments and more activity in the network, which is a better and more competitive service to customers,” 888 COO Itai Frieberger told eGaming Review this morning.
“Each brand will continue to run unique tournaments so there is still going to be differentiation between the two networks,” he added.
Frieberger said they decided to not pool liquidity between the two 888-powered brands sooner because they wanted to see how the market would unfold.
New Jersey’s egaming market has struggled to gain traction since its launch in November 2013, with revenues and player signups coming in below even the lowest pre-launch estimates.
Poker has had a particularly tough time with operators struggling to attract players to their online poker rooms and the AAPN posted a US$4.4m loss in the first half of 2014 alone.
“We are adjusting our activities based on the market,” Frieberger said.
“We identified that there is an opportunity in sharing liquidity to a certain degree. We also wanted to make sure each network and operator had its own agenda independently,” he said.
“But now we will be able to enjoy the power of our platform which as you can see is by far the largest in New Jersey,” he added.
The Borgata and platform partner bwin.party and its partypoker brand have been pooling liquidity from day one and have claimed the lion’s share of the market.
But according to rankings site PokerScout the AAPN/WSOP.com network will now take the lead with a weekly average of 185 cash players compared with 160 for Borgata/partypoker.
888 is also set to launch the first intrastate poker network in Nevada in Q1, with the technology also being used to power the state’s liquidity compact with Delaware.