Managing Editor
PartyPoker’s European network will soon be gone, at least in the form players have known it. Starting September 2, the France-Spain network will become nothing more than a skin on iPoker Europe. So far, there’s no indication of whether the same merger between the companies’ international networks might be coming, but it could be a game-changer for international poker if that happened.
The move is being presented to players as a software update, but they are effectively being migrated to another operator entirely and merged with iPoker’s player pool. All that will remain is PartyPoker’s branding.
That’s perhaps not a bad thing, however. PartyPoker was once a leading force in online poker, but its software hasn’t quite kept pace with the times. Its international site now has fewer than 1,800 players online during peak hours, and traffic on its European network is almost nonexistent.
iPoker Europe, for its part, peaks at a little over 750 players, which is respectable for a ring-fenced market.
Operating as a skin on a larger network in a geofenced market is not a new situation for PartyPoker. That’s the same way it now operates in the U.S., as a New Jersey-only skin on the BetMGM Poker network co-owned by Party’s owner, Entain, and MGM Resorts.
What PartyPoker European Players Should Expect
On the day of the transition, the update to iPoker software will be mandatory, but there won’t be much else required on players’ end.
Attempting to open the PartyPoker client will trigger the automatic update. Since it’s a brand new platform, that means fully downloading a new client, not patching the existing one. Once the update is complete, the old client can safely be deleted, as it will never function again.
PartyPoker promises that the switch to iPoker will deliver “cutting‑edge software, brand‑new features, fresh game formats, and tournaments with even bigger guarantees.”
Players’ account balances, login information, etc. will all migrate to the new platform automatically. The only possible hiccup is if the player’s username matches one already in use on the iPoker network. In that case, the PartyPoker player will be forced to choose a new username.
It’s not clear what will happen to players who already have accounts on both networks. Typically, multi-accounting is strictly forbidden on poker sites for game integrity reasons (Ali Imsirovic was famously banned for doing it). It’s probable that such players will get asked which account they wish to keep, and have the balances merged.
The Rise and Fall of PartyPoker
During online poker’s boom years, PartyPoker was a top player alongside the likes of PokerStars and Full Tilt. It fell out of contention in 2006, however, as one of the companies to take a cautious approach to the U.S. market after the passage of the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act.
While PokerStars and others took their chances serving Americans illegally, PartyPoker elected to play by the rules and suffered heavily in traffic because of it. On the other hand, that meant it wasn’t caught up in Black Friday five years later, which caused some sites like Full Tilt and Ultimate Bet to go out of business entirely.
Still, even in the aftermath of Black Friday, it never fully reclaimed its place on top of the heap.
It did experience a Silver Age of sorts circa 2018, after other rivals to PokerStars throne like 888poker had fallen by the wayside, and before GGPoker emerged as the new top dog. During that period, PartyPoker tried to position itself as a site more sensitive to professional players’ needs than its competitors, with the help of ambassador Patrick Leonard. However, that meant lowering rake and running huge volumes of tournaments with high guarantees, producing a lot of overlays in the process.
Ultimately, that made it a low-margin business for owner Entain. Gradually, PartyPoker dialed back its aggressive strategy, and Leonard moved on in 2023.
Poker Increasingly Sidelined by Publicly-Traded Companies
PartyPoker is far from the only site to have lost some of its luster over the years. 888poker’s downslide has been even harsher, as the former #2 company is now an industry footnote, despite attempting an overhaul with its Poker8 client in 2019.
Even PokerStars is a shadow of its former self. Its journey highlights what is probably the fundamental problem: shareholder pressure.
During its best years, PokerStars was an independent, privately-owned company that offered poker and nothing else. It went public in 2014 through a reverse merger with the much smaller Canadian casino software company Amaya.
PokerStars needed to do so in order to return to the U.S. market, something that was impossible so long as it was still connected with its original owner, Isai Scheinberg, who was still considered a fugitive from American justice at that time. He subsequently resolved the charges and was sentenced to time served and a fine.
As far as players were concerned, PokerStars rapidly went downhill after that point. Amaya gutted its rewards for high-volume players, while adding casino games, and eventually sports betting. It subsequently merged with Flutter in 2020. Although the point of becoming publicly traded was to enter the U.S., PokerStars now finds itself playing second fiddle to FanDuel.
Who is winning? Mostly privately-owned companies focused entirely on poker: GGPoker and WPT being the primary examples.
iPoker Bucks the Publicly Traded Curse
Yet iPoker is also part of a publicly traded company, Playtech. A decade ago, it wasn’t even in the top ten operators. The fact that it is now in a position to absorb PartyPoker as a skin in Europe is remarkable, given that history and the apparent disadvantage of being publicly traded.
The difference, probably, is that Playtech is a business-to-business company and operates iPoker on a network-skin model. It only provides the software, while other companies—now including PartyPoker—do the rest. As long as its clients are prioritizing poker, the product can flourish. Playtech itself doesn’t face the same pressure from shareholders to use poker as just a gateway to higher-yielding casino products.
The network-skin model was popular in the boom years of poker because it provided a fast, modular way to grow and enter new markets. Later, when the industry was in decline, it seemed like an outdated concept. Other companies using the same model, like Microgaming, eventually shuttered their poker divisions.
And yet, by outlasting those rivals, iPoker may have discovered a separate benefit of the network-skin model: Keeping poker at arm’s reach from shareholders who don’t understand the value of poker as a product separate from other gambling verticals.
