Winamax Slashed Buy-In for Major Online Poker Event

8 years ago
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12:30
26 Aug

It has been no secret that the online poker market in France has been in a continuous decline as of late.

Revenues for online poker and gaming market in the European nation fell to €4.5 billion (around US$5.4 billion) last year, which was a steep fall from revenues in previous years.

Player numbers have also decreased across all poker operators in the country, and the future for online poker in France continues to be uncertain to say the least.

Even the largest online poker operator in the country, Winamax, is feeling the pinch, as shown by action the company took in one of its events earlier this week.

The company halved the buy-in to its weekly major online tournament, the €100,000 Winamax Main Event, after the number of entrants on the event’s first starting flight was just 277.

The low turnout led Winamax to cut the buy-in from €150 (around US$170) to €75 (around US85) in an attempt to attract more players and get enough of a prize pool to meet the €100,000 guarantee.

It was not the first time Winamax has taken action in an attempt to get more players and money on its sites.

Winamax has also gone on a football sponsorship binge in recent months, having inked deals with three French football teams in the Ligue 1’s off season.

First, it signed a two-year deal with Olympique de Marseille which will see Winamax’s logo on the short of Marseille’s players throughout all of their Ligue 1 (the premier French football league) matches.

A short time later, the company signed deals with OGC Nice and FC Nantes, which should see the company’s logo feature prominently in many Ligue 1 games in the 2015-16 season.

This does not seem to have had any immediate effect on Winamax’s player numbers, as seen by the initial low turnout to its latest weekly Main Event.

However, the Ligue 1 is only three games into the current season, which may not be long enough for the potential fruits of Winamax’s sponsorships to take effect.

Winamax continues to be the most popular online poker network in France, with a current seven day player average of 950, according to PokerScout.

That is comfortably ahead of PokerStars.fr and PartyPoker.fr, which have seven day averages of 750 and 450 players respectively.


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From Perth, Australia, Bruno de Paiva is a qualified journalist who has worked in both media and non-media roles. At just 24, he was the chief journalist of a newspaper in north-west Australia, leading a team of four regular writers and regional correspondents in producing weekly editions of the pub...Read more

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