888 Poker Reports Significant Gains in Spanish Online Gambling

888 Poker Spain has increased its market share dramatically over the past year.

New Totals

PokerScout tabulations as reported by Pokerfuse have 888poker Spain showing a 65 gain from 18% last year to 24% market share for 2015.

Tabulated from a seven-day rolling average of ring-game players, the new figures solidify 888poker Spain's status as the second largest online poker room in the country, trailing only traditional industry powerhouse PokerStars Spain.

The gains by 888poker Spain actually are in direct contrast to the performance of PokerStars Spain over the same period. The fact is last year PokerStars Spain led the Spanish poker marketplace at a 74-percent market share clip; however, this 2015 rolling seven day tabulations show that market-share has now been pared down to 68 percent.

High Speed Games Compete

This does not necessarily mean that 888poker's growth is eating into PokerStars Spain's revenues. This is more a reflection of the new player trend towards a preferred format of faster-paced games with progressive larger jackpots and lower buy-ins. There is a sense among analysts that this is what happened when PokerStars Spain introduced its ambitious lottery-style Spin & Gos in July of 2014.

As a cash game introduced to the poker network, expectations were not met in large part due to the fact that typical cash card game players had already been lured to faster games that had larger payouts. When games like these are introduced to a poker network, many players that were typically playing cash games are now playing these faster-paced games with hopes for a huge payday.

New Trend Impacts Market

The result of higher speed games reflected a reduction in the level of ring-game traffic available to play the Spin and Gos, as opposed to necessarily a migration to 888poker Spain rooms. There are simply less poker players in the Spanish market because of the popularity of faster-paced games featuring progressive jackpots.