It’s a bit funny when you hear that some more or less succesful gambling companies want to take over the German market and think that it’s just a matter of money. Meh, not really. Germany is one of the markets where gambling companies already lost a couple of million trying to conquer it. You can’t really say that Full Tilt is one of them. Without a doubt Full Tilt spent plenty of millions to step into the German market. I don’t say that it was a failure but they are not confident on a ROI perspective. Sure, they are one of the market leaders in Germany now but that was very expensive.
Right now I suggest that every company that wants to become active in Germany should have a German consultant that knows the market very well. If you hire a German country manager that has to obey foreign managers you simply won’t succeed.
One big factor why the German market is so different is the mentality. Germans don’t like to gamble. It may have historical reasons. It’s a simple fact that Germans are more like investors than gamblers. If they think they can make millions playing poker online, they think that they are investing their time to read strategy articles and such. Pokerstrategy.com follows this business model and they are pretty succesful to say the least. They started in Germany and their $ 50 free bankroll and “becoming a poker professional quickly” model fit perfectly to the German mentality. If you offer $ 50 and a professional poker education to an average Polish player he will sit down at a NL 100 table or play roulette to try to get rich. The German player will read the articles first and will play cautiously on the suggested small stakes. He tries to avoid every risk, plays tight and follows this strategy. So Pokerstrategy did not throw money out of the window. The $ 50 were a good investment and a major factor for their success.
While the German risk aversion is great for some business models, it’s bad for others. That’s something you should consider before entering this market. And my personal tip: talk with me if you think about it: info [at] pokeraffiliatecorner.com
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