GPI has big plans to “sportify poker” in 2016: to appeal to the estimated 100 million poker fans in the word and especially to the 51 million fans who live in the USA, aligning their interests to create a powerful consumer base.
Currently GPI sees the poker audience as “very fragmented,” and it is their mission to help change that by focusing on player recognition and giving the fans what they want.
Pokertainment®, a brand that GPI hopes will go some way in achieving this, will move away from traditional reporting styles that they think has shaped the rhetoric around poker for the past decade, much to its detriment. “Headlines are dominated by coverage of winners of 'Yet Another Poker Event’ (YAPE),” comments Alex Dreyfus, CEO of GPI. “No one ends up caring.”
Dreyfus believes “that’s because money won for money’s sake simply isn’t a very compelling story. It worked well enough to launch the poker boom, but it’s been proven to not be enough not to sustain it.”
Instead, GPI will put time and resources into new content creation, focusing more on exclusive stories as well as creating initiatives like “HoldemX” which promises a new type of Texas Hold’em variant.
The overall goal of all of this will be to align poker more to the eSports and Video Gaming markets which are known to be very successful with engaging with their fans and keeping them interested, “weathering poker’s variance” as GPI would say.
This new wave of innovation and reporting will also go some way to rebuild the star status of poker pros and the profiles of poker brands that have diminished over the past decade.
Overall, Dreyfus and GPI want to help redefine what poker means and 2016 should show some meaningful progress.
