888 Ends 2019 on a High Note but with Poker Being a Slight Setback

888 Holdings has started 2020 with great news.

“The group has delivered solid progress. We are very encouraged by the growth in new customers during 2019 with a record of more than one million new customers signing up to 888’s brands during the year”, said Chief Executive Itai Pazner.

The Gibraltar-based online gaming company has revealed that even though it made progress in multiple areas during previous year, this might not have been the case for poker.

888’s official 2019 financial report won’t be released until March, but casino and sports betting have shown great performance, while there have been challenges with poker.

Yet, the company is optimistic that the launch of its new Poker 8 platform might improve the situation.

888 said it was happy with the first-phase rollout of its Poker 8 platform. The company plans to add “a number of exciting new product features” and will be rolling out the final-phase platform in 2020.

The revenue in the United Kingdom is continuing to increase, as well as in Italy.  888 has also seen growth in the Swedish and Romanian regulated markets throughout the past year.

As for the Spanish market, 888 noted that the launch of competitors’ shared poker liquidity networks between Spain, Portugal and France affected revenue in the country.

However 888 said the early performance of its shared liquidity network between Portugal and Spain, launched in July, was encouraging.

“We have entered 2020 with good momentum across several regulated European markets and, underpinned by further investment in our team, marketing and product development, we remain focused on achieving further progress in the US.

With 888’s core strengths as a responsible operator with outstanding technology and diversification across a number of regulated markets, the board remains confident of further progress in the year ahead,” Pazner concluded.