Depending on who you ask, online poker is going to experience a slow rise to prominence in the next couple of years, or it could skyrocket to oblivion and explode like nobody’s business.
Ask Jeffrey Haas, Head of Poker at Party Poker, about the future of mobile gambling, specifically mobile poker, and he has a specific number in mind. Speaking to TrustedReviews at a World Poker Tour National series event in London, Haas believes that mobile poker is headed for a 25 to 30 percent increase in user base by 2014. “Today we have 4 per cent of our user base [on mobile], but I see it growing,” Haas told Trusted Reviews.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s 25 to 30 per cent of all players by the end of 2014, if not more.”
You don’t need to be a mathematician to determine that a rise from four percent to 30 percent represents a dramatic uptick in users. Now, it doesn’t mean that the additional percentage exclusively represents new users; a big chunk will likely come from existing players that are shifting their online poker games from the old desktops to smartphones and tablets.
But it does point to a shift in preference from these players, largely attributed to the obvious benefits of mobile gambling as a more accessible way for users to play with their money than it would have been to sit in front of a desktop and wait for weeds to grow outside their windows.
In addition to the accessibility of mobile gambling, Haas also told Trusted Reviews that the shift towards mobile gambling could also have implications on how players play, suggesting that the frenzied nature of being on-the-go while keeping tabs on poker games will make players play a lot looser than they would in other platforms.
Regardless of how players play on mobile platforms, the implications are pretty evident. There’s a growth in mobile gambling that will happen in the next few years. Early estimates from the recently-concluded Mobile and Table Gambling Summit indicated that revenues from mobile and tablet gambling will more than double to 11 billion euros by 2015 compared to the 4.7 billion euros it earned a year ago.
Mobile gambling is growing and mobile poker is a big part of that. How much growth the latter will have in the next few years is still a matter of interpretation. But don’t bet against Haas’ predictions of a 25 to 30 percent rise in users. If anything, that could very well be a conservative estimate.
