Cristiano Ronaldo is helping PokerStars promote their online poker room in his native home to significant effect, but needs to try a lot harder with his most recent #RaiseIt videos.
PokerStars are taking full advantage of being the only gunslinger in the Portuguese regulated and fully licensed online poker market by bringing out their bazooka.
The Portuguese revere Cristiano Ronaldo as a God. The 2016 Ballon d’Or winner single-footedly delivered the European Championships to the Portuguese public in the summer, their first major tournament victory. So it makes perfect sense for PokerStars to use him to usher more players to their tables.
The new ad campaign, dubbed ‘The Game,’ features Ronaldo playing in a home game with friends and the early signs show the ad has had the desired effect. Although statistics drawn from the online poker traffic ranking site, PokerScout, are a tad unreliable, PokerStars.pt was ranking ahead of 888Poker as the second busiest online cash game poker room on the planet.
The figures make sense. The country’s gambling regulator, Serviços de Regulação e Inspeção de Jogos (SRIJ) has handed PokerStars the only license thus far. And that’s quite a headstart for the largest online poker room in the world.
The Portuguese online poker market is ring-fenced in the same way as Italy, France and Spain. The rumour mill continues to create smoke around the idea of shared liquidity with one or more of these nations, but there is no sign of fire as of yet.
PokerStars.pt only offers a basic package of No-Limit Hold’em, Omaha, Blackjack and Roulette. Spin & Go games and other derivatives of poker games, more casino table games and a sports book are in the pipeline.
Ronaldo and Dwayne Wade Continue #Raiseit Campaign
Ronaldo and Chicago Bulls star, Dwayne Wade continued to one-up each other this week with yet another set of #RaiseIt videos distributed via their social media channels. The pair had already released two videos before their Christmas offerings.
Ronaldo bent a ball around a wall of snowmen to hit a target containing Wade’s face in an effort worth 5/10. Wade deserves a -1/10 for his incredibly lacklustre and lazy effort of doing nothing other than throwing a basketball into a hoop (I thought that was his day job).
The videos have so received more than 43 million views across social media channels, but judging by these two turkeys, I think the promotion has run its course.
You can check out the videos yourself at www.nowraiseit.com.
