There’s Almost No Online Poker Media Left

The panorama of on-line poker media has quietly collapsed. Within the final yr alone, three cornerstone poker web sites have been bought to crypto advertising firms that now use these trusted domains to advertise unregulated offshore playing.

The brand new house owners make use of a easy but efficient technique: they purchase established domains with sturdy search authority, then redirect that site visitors towards crypto playing websites that function exterior regulatory frameworks. In a single day, websites that after championed regulated poker develop into autos for selling “no KYC crypto casinos” and “non-GAMSTOP casinos“—explicitly concentrating on susceptible gamers in search of to bypass playing protections.

This transformation leaves a vital void in poker media. Immediately, there are nearly no websites left that also advocate for authorized, regulated on-line poker.

Crypto Playing is Taking Over

Earlier this week, our sister publication Poker Trade PRO printed an in-depth investigation into how one firm had quietly purchased up three legacy poker web sites during the last yr to advertise crypto playing.

It was one thing of an open secret {that a} advertising outfit had bought PokerScout.com a yr in the past. Beforehand owned by a public massive US regulated affiliate firm, Catena Media, the location switched from selling authorized, regulated US poker websites to pushing offshore crypto websites in a single day. It later added pages to selling “no KYC crypto casinos” and related.

However this was simply the tip of the iceberg. As detailed within the PRO piece, the identical firm additionally purchased CardPlayer.com in late 2024, and PokerStrategy.com in January 2025. PokerStrategy.com was bought by Playtech for $6.1 million.

These three websites had been as soon as cornerstones of poker media. Again within the day, pre-Catena, Pokerscout.com was a extremely influential web site for poker gamers in search of to grasp the net poker panorama (their every day information aggregation feed was additionally the most effective sources for sharing headlines). CardPlayer.com was the net presence of the influential print journal of just about 4 a long time’ standing. And PokerStrategy was as soon as the most important group of on-line poker gamers on the earth and by far probably the most influential poker affiliate.

The brand new proprietor of those three websites has a easy marketing strategy. It buys up these domains, and promotes crypto on-line casinos and poker. They promote Coin Poker as their prime poker web site, no matter jurisdiction. Their myriad on-line on line casino companions are all regulated in Anjouan (can you discover that on a map?). They’re all owned by a small handful of firms; it’s doubtless that one enterprise is behind each a part of this enterprise — from area acquisition, to web optimization advertising, to the precise operation of the casinos themselves.

The domains they purchase may be about on-line poker, on-line on line casino or esports. They may be previous tech websites or bitcoin information websites. They may be utterly unrelated legacy media websites, even lapsed websites for faculties. It doesn’t matter. They add a set of touchdown pages concentrating on phrases like “no KYC casinos,” “offshore casinos,” “quickest paying casinos” and “non GAMSTOP casinos” (GAMSTOP is the UK’s self-exclusion system. All licensed casinos within the UK should implement GAMSTOP).

That is referred to as a parasite web optimization technique. Google sees a site that has years’ price of authority, belief and site visitors and rightly ranks it extremely. It will probably’t know the location has modified palms. Nevertheless it sees new pages up about crypto playing, and dutifully (and quite gullibly) assumes these should even be beneficial, genuine items of content material, so places them on the prime of search outcomes. To maintain up the pretense, these websites usually proceed their “actual” information and content material manufacturing, although usually skinny, plagiarized content material produced very cheaply. The true enterprise lies behind the entrance web page.

Google tries to crack down on this observe, but it surely’s a recreation of whack-a-mole: As one area will get deindexed, one other will get purchased up. A search right this moment for “non-GAMSTOP casinos” seems prime outcomes from RochdaleOnline.co.uk, gdalabel.co.uk, eSports Insider, and Abercorn Faculty. These are all owned by the identical firm, pushing the identical crypto casinos.

There’s Virtually No One Left to Promote Regulated On-line Poker

This text will not be in regards to the enterprise of parasite web optimization. For that, you possibly can learn the unique PRO article and the Recluedo.com weblog (which first uncovered the enterprise orchestrating all the operation — there’s one article particularly in regards to the CardPlayer.com buy). It’s a matter that expands nicely past playing.

This text can be not going to be in regards to the ethics or legality of selling these websites — although it’s price a quick pause to think about what it means to focus on “non-GAMSTOP” or “no KYC on line casino” search phrases (KYC, or know your buyer, is a strategy of figuring out the participant to make sure they will afford the quantities they gamble). These are programs put in place to guard these most susceptible to playing habit. Think about who may be looking for these phrases and touchdown on a web page that promotes a crypto web site. (CoinPoker.com, together with nearly 200 related URLs, has been faraway from Google search ends in the UK, deemed illegal explicitly as a result of they function with out license and out of doors of GAMSTOP).

Right here, I wish to replicate on what this implies for the state of on-line poker media — and specifically, the remaining websites that debate and advocate for the growth of authorized, regulated on-line poker. As a result of now you can rely them on one hand.

Think about right this moment the worth of the area PokerStrategy.com — a web site bought by Playtech twelve years in the past for $50 million because the busiest on-line poker group on the earth. Its worth has shrunk by 90%, and it was bought off to an organization whose complete enterprise is pushing crypto on-line casinos by search key phrases.

PokerScout.com was as soon as a honored unbiased on-line poker web site. However even by 2017, when it was bought off to Catena Media, its worth was already simply $350,000. Catena couldn’t make it work, so has bought it on to an organization that may. For those who seek for “greatest nevada on-line poker websites,” PokerScout shall be close to the highest, telling you its Coin Poker. That’s its worth now.

As soon as a web site promotes offshore websites, there’s no going again. To work within the US market, an affiliate must be licensed, they usually can’t work with offshore websites in tandem. Even exterior the US, most official operators don’t wish to work with websites that additionally promote unregulated websites. So websites have to choose — work within the white market, or change to the gray and black. And within the final couple of years, we’ve seen increasingly more notice that working within the white market is nonviable.

Catena Media has nearly solely ditched on-line poker as a product to advertise. It purchased OnlinePokerReport, at its peak the main web site for regulated on-line poker information, and later shut it down. USPoker.com is now dormant; PokerScout bought. The fact is that the regulated on-line poker market is so robust that it’s extra beneficial both selling an offshore web site, or promoting it to an organization who will.

It’s got to the purpose the place there’s nearly nobody that’s aligned with selling the growth of authorized, regulated on-line poker.

Radio Silence for Our #GrowPAPoker Marketing campaign

The influence of this may be illustrated with our latest efforts to encourage Pennsylvania to hitch the multi-state web gaming settlement and permit for shared liquidity. We launched the marketing campaign #GrowPAPoker simply over a yr in the past. The objective was for a media blitz, working with different organizations to get the phrase out and encourage the Governor to signal a invoice to permit for the expansion of the regulated recreation.

What assist did this marketing campaign obtain? PokerStars helped on social media, they ran a particular freeroll, and PokerNews additionally helped an awesome deal — they did write-ups, and their ambassador streamed his play on the freeroll (Rep. George Dunbar, MSIGA invoice sponsor and key champion of #GrowPAPoker, additionally performed). We acquired a tweet from GGPoker. We acquired a few mentions in newsletters.

And … that was it. There have been no different write-ups in every other publication. Satirically, with plagiarism of our content material rampant, the one time we successfully endorsed a copy-paste job and there’s nothing. A simple-lift, positive-message article a few social media marketing campaign and a freeroll? Silence. For the few remaining websites nonetheless selling regulated on-line poker, most have anachronistic insurance policies of pretending no different websites exist — so mentioning us or the marketing campaign is presumably blackballed. For the remainder, the growth of multi-state on-line poker was really counterproductive to their web site’s targets: A rising multi-state US regulated poker market reduces the attraction of offshore crypto poker websites.

Fortunately, additional assist wasn’t wanted, as a result of we had been blown away by the assist that basically mattered — from the US on-line poker group. Individuals tweeted, they emailed, they usually wrote letters in massive numbers. The marketing campaign was successful. Simply over six months after we began the marketing campaign, the Governor despatched a letter to the regulator in search of it request entry into MSIGA. It acquired official invitation quickly after. We count on the Governor’s signature imminently, and shared liquidity in PA to launch in weeks.

That’s what a grassroots motion can do. And that’s what’s dying out.

Websites Must Act Now

The underside line is that there’s nearly nobody left to champion these kinds of causes. Websites are shutting down. Domains are being bought off to parasite media firms to use 20-year area historical past to funnel playing addicts to “No KYC” crypto websites.

What might be finished? Two issues must occur, and they should occur instantly.

The few websites which might be left that promote regulated on-line poker must assist one another. We have to hyperlink to one another. Give credit score. Help unique content material. Encourage the expansion of the regulated recreation.

And actual cash poker firms that function in regulated markets must assist the remaining media which might be nonetheless aligned with them. You’re up towards behemoths shopping for up classic poker domains to shovel unregulated alternate options. If you would like a web site selling you on the prime of a search outcome for searches like “PA on-line poker websites,” that takes effort, ability and funding.

To be completely clear, this isn’t an article blaming anybody for promoting up. This isn’t an argument on the morals of licensed vs unlicensed on-line poker, regulated or unregulated, crypto websites vs actual cash websites. Websites are companies. They need to pay workers. They should make the choices essential to survive — or to money in. There’s nonetheless a variety of nice poker writers on the market, they usually might need to jot down for much less scrupulous websites.

This text is making an attempt to shine a highlight on the state of on-line poker media, and the path issues are entering into.

If we teleport ahead a number of years, there’s an actual probability there shall be a dozen states within the US related collectively for a big multi-state on-line poker ecosystem. There may be some momentum right here; by the top of this yr, we must always have 5 or 6 states related collectively. We’ve new operators like DraftKings and BetRivers respiratory life into the area. If we get a pair extra states — Illinois and New York being perennial hopefuls — we may see a US regulated market rivaling the most important and most respected on the earth.

However given the present trajectory, there shall be no websites left to put it on the market.

April 13: The article was edited after publication to take away one line that gave examples of the few remaining lively US on-line poker associates, because it distracted from the primary thesis of the article.