Full Tilt Poker Expands Further Into Casino Gambling

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Wednesday, April 30th, 2014 | Written by Adam Brown

In January of this year, The Rational Group launched online casino games on its Full Tilt Poker site, although at the time its offering was restricted to just roulette and blackjack. A few month later and the company is preparing for the next phase of its operations after announcing a partnership with Swedish casino games developer Net Entertainment to bring the full range of mobile and desktop casino games to the gambling site. Following announcement of the deal, Rational Group Director of Casino, Sam Hobcraft, said:

“Net Entertainment has some of the best games in the industry and will deliver a lot of value to our business, not least on the mobile platform. We look forward to working with NetEnt to develop a truly innovative gaming experience for our customers.”

Full Tilt Goes Beyond Poker

The Rational Group is one of the world’s leading online gaming companies, and as well as holding more online poker licenses than any other online gambling company, it is also the parent company of both Full Tilt and PokerStars.

Unlike PokerStars, however, which thus far has restricted itself to just offering poker and said it would continue to do so “for the foreseeable future”, Full Tilt decided to add real money casino games to its core product.

Even before Full Tilt took its first step towards online casino gambling in January, however, the innovative site had already been experimenting with bringing an extra element of excitement and gambling to its selection of poker games, starting with the introduction of Rush Poker in early 2010. Full Tilt then launched its Adrenaline Rush Poker format a few months back, which is designed to create fast and furious action with all-ins taking place with a frightening frequency.

Importance of casino games for online gambling profits

Naturally many poker purists frowned upon such games, claiming that not only did they reduce the skill in poker to the level of a crap shoot, but also that new “fish” dollars would subsequently exit the poker ecology as recreational players get bored and bust their bankrolls at the site’s online casino.

Nevertheless, aside from PokerStars which continues to monopolize the online poker landscape with ten times the traffic as its nearest rivals, most of the other internet poker sites are struggling to turn a profit and so casino games are seen as a vital in being able to operate successfully.

Casing in point, in the USA’s biggest regulated market of New Jersey online casino games represent roughly two-thirds of all online gambling revenues and have seen a steady increase in growth compared to poker, which has either remained flat or decreased. In March, the state’s six casinos with online licenses generated $8.6 million from casino games compared to $7.2 million in February, while online poker stayed flat at $3.2 million compared to $3.1 million for the month prior. Moreover, New Jersey has reported three months in a row of declining traffic with daily cash-game players now at their lowest point since December.

With that said, poker still remains a vital link in attracting recreational players to online websites, who once there may subsequently be tempted to chance their hand on other gambling games offered by the sites.

Net Entertainment agreement

Full Tilt Poker has spectacularly fallen from grace ever since Black-Friday started an ugly chain of events culminating in the revelation that Full Tilt Poker had all but drained the coffers of its players’ money. Prior to 2011, Full Tilt was the number two site in the online poker industry, but since has dropped to its present level of 4th with around 1,800 cash game players according to PokerScout.

Naturally, the site has lost a great deal of traffic and revenues over this period and so partnering up with Net Entertainment to offer a comprehensive range of casino games could now help improve its badly hit balance sheet. Currently, Net Entertainment provides gambling software to dozens of top gambling brands, including SportingBet, Ladbrokes, Paf and bet365, and commenting on what the new deal means to both The Rational Group and Net Entertainment, its Chief of GMO and MD Björn Krantz, explained:

“Rational Group runs the largest online poker operation globally and we are very proud and excited about this partnership, which will allow us to be a first mover within their new casino channel venture. Together with Rational Group, our games portfolio will reach a completely new player base, and we are confident that our games will be well received.”