Online poker has been around since the early 2000s, and brands like PartyPoker, 888poker, and PokerStars dominated the industry, with PokerStars especially rising to the top in the years leading up to and following Black Friday.
Yet, even PokerStars could not survive the onslaught that was brought to the online poker industry by GGPoker, a new operator founded in 2014 with a clear goal of dominating the global market.
In just a few short years, GGPoker was able to go from an obscure Asia-facing poker site to the biggest poker site in the world, thanks to strategic investments, smart partnerships, and product development that focused on the player.
This is the story of how GGPoker went from being the new kid on the block to becoming an undisputed king of online poker in well under 10 years, and its continuing success in recent years.
GGPoker Started as an Obscure Poker Site
GGPoker was founded in 2014. Back then, it only operated in the Asian markets, and it attracted players from across the continent, but on a limited scale.
In its early years, GGPoker was just another small online poker site, and there was no clear indication that it would ever grow into the global phenomenon it is today.
Yet, its owners clearly had a vision of GGPoker going global, and the plan had multiple parts that would be put into action one at a time.
The first step, of course, was obtaining operating licenses in major markets like Europe and UK, a move that was made in 2017.
Once it held licenses from gaming regulators in Malta, the Isle of Man, and the United Kingdom, GGPoker was ready to go on a marketing rampage that would see it dominate the market.
Developing the Best Poker Platform on the Market
Before GGPoker could become a global force in online poker, it had to create a product that players could fully enjoy, and that meant creating a poker platform that can parry the likes of PokerStars.
A big part of that development was the introduction of an integrated poker HUD and PokerCraft, tools that would allow players to track their opponents’ stats, as well as their own, all within the platform.
The integrated tracking tools meant that even recreational players would now be on the same footing as the pros, while third-party tools were banned from the platform altogether.
Beyond that, GGPoker also introduced an integrated staking platform, allowing players to sell pieces of their tournament action within the platform.
Other features such as card squeeze, all-in insurance, run it multiple times, cash drops, bubble protection, and more came over the years, each adding a new flavor to the GGPoker platform and making it the most comprehensive online poker product on the market.
As the platform reached full maturity and was on par, in terms of looks and functionality, with PokerStars, GGPoker was ready to take the poker world by storm.
Massive Guarantees and Focus on Tournaments Show Results
In 2018, GGPoker introduced the Good Game Series (GGS) with a $3.5 million guarantee. The Series was GGPoker’s first attempt at creating a massive tournament festival, and it was a success, although its guarantee had nothing on the ones PokerStars was already running at the time.
Yet, over the next three years, GGPoker kept making its online tournaments bigger, and every guarantee it set ended up being smashed, time and time again.
By 2020, GGPoker was already running a $50 million guaranteed tournament series, and the tournaments were filling up quickly, with no overlay in sight.
At the same time, GGPoker introduced GG Masters, a series of weekly poker tournaments that would run on the weekends, competing with the likes of Sunday Million and the rest of PokerStars’ Sunday schedule.
In 2020, in the midst of all the growth, GGPoker signed the biggest deal of them all, partnering up with the World Series of Poker (WSOP) to run its first Online Circuit Series.
This was a huge move at the time, and one that would pave the way for GGPoker becoming the owner of the entire WSOP brand years later. At the time, the partnership with WSOP, which kept expanding over the years, meant that GGPoker was on a clear path to dominate online poker once and for all.
Strategic Partnerships Take GGPoker to the Next Level
The moment that perhaps signified the growth of GGPoker more than any other came in late 2019, when the operator signed a deal with Daniel Negreanu to become its brand ambassador.
Negreanu had famously been a brand ambassador for PokerStars for years before that, and was the face of PokerStars since the days of the Poker Boom.
Now, Daniel was becoming the new face of GGPoker, and that meant a lot to the average poker player, who would likely follow wherever Negreanu decided to go.
Around the same time, GGPoker established a number of other key partnerships with the likes of Fedor Holz, Bertrand “Elky” Grospelier, and Felipe Ramos, all aiming to get the attention of players in particular markets and player groups.
The strategy worked like a charm, and following partnerships with the Kings Casino and the WSOP, GGPoker was ready to climb to the summit as the undisputed king of online poker.
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 came as a blessing to GGPoker, as millions of people around the world were stuck in their homes for months at a time. Online poker was a great pastime for those mundane days, and poker sites saw record numbers of players across the board.
GGPoker once again benefited more than most, as its numbers surged to unprecedented heights, and it was the only poker operator whose stats kept growing even once the pandemic was over.
Can GGPoker Remain Undisputed at the Top?
GGPoker was able to establish itself as the top online poker platform in the world, and it currently has no direct competitors for the spot.
Yet, the same could be said for other poker sites in the past, until GGPoker came along and changed the narrative in just a few short years.
Emerging poker platforms, namely CoinPoker, are now making moves similar to the ones GGPoker made back in the day, looking to appeal to the younger generations of players and set themselves up for success in the future.
If GGPoker wants to remain at the top, it will need to keep growing and giving players reasons to choose its platform instead of competitors.
While GGPoker is perfectly safe at the top of the online poker charts for the next couple of years, new contenders for the number one slot could well emerge before 2030, with innovative product features and marketing models creating opportunities for crypto-based poker platforms to compete even with a giant of GGPoker’s magnitude.
