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PLAYTECH HOPEFUL ON INTERNET POKER (Update)

Source: bluffed.net


Despite negative numbers in its latest report to the market, Playtech execs remain upbeat

Playtech's latest quarterly and annual results reflected the largely common trend in the industry of a decline in online poker, with revenues falling by 27% to Euro 4 million compared to the same quarter a year ago, and by 18% to Euro 17.8 million over the year 2025, but that did not stop company execs from being upbeat in press conference exchanges on the results with reporters Friday.

The company's finance chief, Ron Hoffman, pointed out that the last two months of 2025 had seen some improvement in revenues from online poker, thanks primarily to the iPoker tiered program and to the arrival of new licensees like Betfair, Betclic Everest and Gala Coral.

"Revenues from November actually grew, benefitting from the liquidity programme introduced in Q3 and new licensees which migrated to the iPoker network during the fourth quarter, Hoffman said.

Chief executive Mor Weizer was similarly upbeat about the group's poker prospects, saying that he anticipated the uptick in the last two months of the year would spill over and continue through 2025, driven by a growing number of licensees. He also observed that as the tier program became more entrenched and proved itself, it should encourage operators to make further investments in their poker offerings.

Weizer appears to have his sights focused on the regulated national markets going forward, explaining that the Playtech group approach was to present an online poker network that was more than acceptable to regulated and prospective regulated national markets, thus facilitating the use of a wider player liquidity option for countries that agreed to access a common global pool.

He pointed to the talks between regulators in France, Italy and Spain as harbingers of a possible change from small, ring-fenced player pools to larger, shared player pools.

"This remains an important part of our poker strategy, especially as regulated jurisdictions have indicated they are considering removing the restrictions to ring-fence their own markets, Weizer commented.

Related News Tags: Playtech, Betfair, Coral