EVEREST CONFIRMS IPOKER DEAL

The French online poker and casino group known as Betclic-Everst has announced its partnership with Playtech that is famous for bringing further consolidations of its brands on Playtech’s iPoker Network. It has been revealed on pokerfuse last month that Everest will drop its poker software and will transition its players to iPoker. Betclic.com is the only other website that is operating on the Everest Poker Network (EPN) and will also take part in the switch.

They will join Betclic-Everest’s other brands known as Expect and Betclick IT, that are already part of the iPoker network. The move is expected to take place by the end of this year.

The transition that is going to take place between these two brands has been touted last week by Playtec looking to reverse the declining number of players that are present on the network. It has been said that Everest is expected to provide a 20% boost in active cash game players.

The France-only (.FR) websites for those two brand names will move on to the stagnant iPoker.FR network. It has been reported that Everest Poker is the third largest player pool in France right behind PokerStars and Winamax but it is ahead of PartyPoker.FR.

The Betclic Everest Group CEO Ignatio Martin has cited player pool liquidity and Palytech’s upgraded software as a reason for the big change. iPoker has recently rolled out a new “Speed Poker” brand of fast-fold poker.

Martin has said a few things about Playtech’s partnership such as, “[O]ur player community will enjoy a much better product and state of the art technology. With this move we continue to execute our strategy of offering the best online gambling experience to our players and cementing our leadership position in the main European markets where we are currently present.”

Everest Poker was once a top tier in independent poker network, with large bases held in France and Italy. After the regulation and separation of the two markets in the years 2009 and 2010 the networks traffic plummeted. Although buoyed by introduction of betclic.com the player in the 2011 network never returned to its past glory. The traffic has been down to around 26% for many years according to the PokerScout data.

Source: Pokerfuse