- While growth in poker so far this year is at 23%, that is in-line with casino and sports growth at Kindred.
- As a share of group revenue, online poker is still a tiny 1.9%.
- Its major competitors—PokerStars, 888, and partypoker—are all now aggressively seeking to acquire poker customers for cross-sell.
- To stay relevant, Unibet may need to look at heavier investment.
Unibet Poker reported 47% growth in its online poker vertical last quarter. At £4.4 million, it is not just the group’s best Q3 on record, but it returns the vertical to the level of expansion not seen since mid-2017.
So far this year, poker has generated £13 million in revenue. Not only is it larger than the full-year revenues reported by the group in 2015 and 2016, but it is more than double the revenue from 2014. Compared to last year, it is tracking growth of 23% and could reach close to £20 million by the end of the year.
However, this is only keeping in line with Kindred’s other gaming verticals. The casino vertical is up 21% in the first three quarters this year; sports betting, thanks in part to the World Cup, is up 38%.
As a share of group revenue, online poker is a tiny 1.9%. While there is growth there, both sequentially (it was 1.8% in Q2 2018) and annually (1.5% in Q3 2017), one has to look to the decimal places to see any movement.
