Notable online US sportsbook Heritage Sports has announced that it has launched a poker room on the Winning Poker Network (WPN), formerly Yatahay. Like the sportsbook, the poker room is not open to the public—a representative of Heritage Sports told pokerfuse that the poker room is “private” and “by invitation only.”
Heritage Sports is considered a top-tier exclusive sportsbook, whose invite-only policy allows them to focus on giving VIP treatment, according to Sports Book Review. SBR gives Heritage an A- grade and a coveted spot on its “recommended” list.
Though the poker room is also only open to its exclusive clients, players will be seated at tables with other skins across the network. The deal should help increase player liquidity at WPN, which sits in fifth place for US-facing networks.
The network rebranded from Yatahay in January this year, and all the network skins now operate on .eu and .ag domain names following the Blue Monday domain name seizures, in which many top-tier Yatahay skins—including True Poker and Doyle’s Room—lost their dot-coms.
The network took a further blow when Doyle’s Room lost it’s eponymous pro player, but the player base was acquired by a relaunched Americas Cardroom in late 2011. This, coupled with heavy US advertising, rejuvenated the Winning Poker network. PokerScout reports that site traffic has increased 200% over the last year.
In July last year Heritage Sports bought the US player pools from BetJamaica and TheGreek when they left the US market.
