Devilfish Gaming Hoping For Improved 2011

An interesting article appeared in Gaming Intelligence this week which highlighted the fact that although there have been plenty of poker industry success stories throughout 2010, online gaming business  Devilfish Poker will be hoping for better success in 2011.
The original article goes on to explain that although Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott is the UK’s highest earning poker player, the company associated with his name, Devilfish Gaming Plc, is currently selling its subsidiary Devilfish Poker for a mere £0.3m.
Although the company appeared with much fanfare in 2005, pretty soon it ran into trouble after the Kahnawake licensed site failed to receive the UK’s e-gaming ‘white list,’ approval thus disallowing it to advertise to its main market in Britain.
Consequently, when it initially floated it had just 700 paying customers and as CEO Paul Barnes exclusively told Gaming Intelligence this week:
“After the IPO (initial public offering) we relaunched on Entraction and were effectively a start up company. We grew the revenues rapidly and built the brand making good use of very scarce resources. We built a small but highly talented team, who worked very hard in the business.  We made extensive use of PR and edgy promotions. We implemented the affiliate program from scratch. I’m very proud of what we achieved.”
Despite growing its customer base to over 5,000 players within a year, the company was still unable to cover its expenses and in 2009 lost over £600,000 and more than £2m in 2010.
Among the factors which Barnes puts down to affecting the company’s true potential was a challenging economic climate, as well as the growing tendency in the online poker market to move towards consolidation.
In spite of the factors affecting the company’s success in the past, Barnes says he believes the company is now better placed than ever to thrive in the industry and commented:
“The brand is now well established and there is real value in it. I am sure the business will continue growing again in the future when properly capitalised.”