Small is Beautiful

At 12am on a weekday night, poker programming is easy to find on terrestrial TV in the UK. These shows range from high-stakes cash games, to invitation-only sit&gos, but there is one obvious exception. On Channel 4 you can watch unknown amateur players fighting it out in the £500 buy-in PokerStars UKIPT. Although the event is a fraction of the buy-in of the WSOP main event it somehow attracts a larger TV audience than poker’s grandest stage.

It’s symptomatic of a wider trend in poker that has been embraced by almost all operators. Within the UK a range of £100 to £500 events backed by online sites are now a common sight, and the model is also found throughout Europe as operators look for cost effective ways to establish their brand in an increasingly fickle market. And these are no longer the poor relation of the live poker world. Low-stakes poker is the backbone of all online poker, with H2 Gambling Capital suggesting as much as 77% of all online play is at the micro-stakes level. But it took the credit crunch to make marketers in the online and live poker sectors look beyond the $10,000 events and million dollar dreams for poker events and tours.

The dream being sold is no longer about life changing wins and million dollar paydays, but modest wins, entertainment and 15 minutes of fame.  It fits in with a global trend. In the US, we have seen smaller buy-in WPT events attract huge fields and Las Vegas card rooms offering $0.50/$1 tables with even the likes of Bellagio offering $1/$2 tables. Live poker has had to change and make itself more attractive to a poker community that is accustomed to playing for far lower stakes online.  

Poker players, it seems, have become far more risk averse. Or possibly more realistic in their ambitions. A $5,000 or $10,000 tournament is a once in a lifetime ambition for many poker players, and not something they will spend a lot of time and money attempting to qualify for. But a $500 or €500 event feels more achievable, and can still provide the hit of fame and perceived fortune that keeps players coming back to the game.  

More than the money
Sometimes it’s not even about the money. Perhaps the lowest stakes tour is one familiar to viewers of the niche Sky Poker channel in the UK. A series of £100 events dotted around the UK, these limited field events quickly sell out despite seats only being available through online satellites. They are hugely popular. The TV highlights packages are not really the main draw for the tour, although the profile boost in the Sky Poker community for winning is arguably more important than the £5,000 first prize.

And it's not just Sky and PokerStars who are in on the act with the likes of online poker stalwart Paradise Poker running a series of events throughout Europe with modest €500 buy-ins. Betfair moved from sponsoring the £10,000 buy-in WSOPE to hosting Betfair Live, a $500 event at the Fox Club in London. And it’s arguable which event brought more value to the brand.

This torrent of low-stakes events is not just limited to the British Isles either. Throughout Europe the long-term market leader for sponsored tours, PokerStars, have set up and are running localised events with much lower buy-ins than the prestige event, the EPT. Alongside the UKIPT there is the recently launched EUREKA Tour, a series of €800 events in Eastern Europe.

The Eureka tour is clearly targeted at growing the brand in a region that can be notoriously difficult to market in. A live poker event gives the local marketing team a chance to work with media in the region and solidify its brand as having a ‘presence’ in each country. Likewise, Unibet have placed great stock in the Eastern European region for growth in poker and backed this up with a live tour and poker TV programming in the region.  

But while Unibet’s tours appear to be mostly aimed at generating a rival to the EPT, the PokerStars regional tours seem far more focused on building an entirely new market.  One senior executive told InsidePoker Business that he was pushing for a greater use of smaller buy-in events to help grow the brand in Europe. And there is little doubt the types of players at these events are vastly different from a typical EPT or WPT event.

In regions such as Eastern Europe where typical average player values are lower than Western Europe it makes sense to aim lower if a tour is seen as an acquisition route. Certainly, online players seem to enjoy the live experience, and the tours can act as both a CRM and an acquisition tool with players pushed to sign up online and a raft of satellites offered at a range of buy-in levels.   

The winning formula
Other poker operators looking east include the Entraction Network with its European Masters of Poker series. The slightly higher €1,000 buy-in events are mainly aimed at the Spanish and Portuguese regions, but also include a stop in Bulgaria. And the Ongame network-backed Grand Series of Poker (GSOP), which is slightly outside the recreational bracket at €1,500 buy-ins, has stops in Riga and Bucharest.  These mid-size events are not new to poker, however, and it’s the smaller events that mark the most interesting trend within online poker marketing. Smaller stakes live events are unlikely to be anything other than break even at best for operators, and require a huge amount of time and resources to pull off. But they offer significant benefits if successful.

Interestingly, the benefits of the tours can be widely different depending on the online site behind them. For Sky Poker or PKR, whose PKR Live series has been hugely successful, they are a way of building the community together and bringing the brand closer to its player base. For PokerStars who already have the likes of the EPT it is more a local acquisition exercise with huge numbers of players winning seats in online satellites and being able to buy-in directly online.

For other operators such as Paradise it is something in the middle. With event satellites acting as a useful retention and reactivation tool, while the regional marketing teams can use the events as an acquisition tool and a way of generating some publicity in the region. And crucially one thing is universally true, the players love the events.
With poker’s growth tailing off across Europe and consumers increasingly cautious with their money in harsh financial times the lower stakes poker tour is proving a strong marketing tool for operators who get the formula right.

The key is to build that sense of occasion, provide a high quality experience to the players and generate some publicity in the media. As with everything in online poker it is easier said than done. But the rewards are there for those operators who get it right.