The WSOP is in the news right now as the tournament is currently taking place at the Rio Convention Centre in Las Vegas, Nevada. The WSOP will close on the 15th of July and there are large cash prizes on offer.
At the same time, the WSOP online app and website are also in the news. The WSOP play-money social poker app has gained immense popularity in the poker community and has now recorded over 6 million downloads.
The Electronic Arts (EA) partner Caesars Interactive Entertainment (CIE) recently confirmed that it has now taken over the WSOP app project and will now control it 100% in house. This popular poker app can be downloaded on Android, Kindle, Facebook as well as all iOS devices.
CIE recently acquired EA’s interest in the product but did not disclose the amount paid. CIE will look to improve and expand the reach of the app by having a team work on the app. This team of specialists will function from CIE’s innovative social poker development studio in Montreal.
Mitch Garber, the CEO of Caesars Interactive Entertainment hails from Montreal, and works from the headquarters of CIE in the city. Garber will also have a team of 19 consultants in Montreal who will be reporting directly to Playtika, CIE’s social gaming division Playtika.
Speaking about the Montreal office and the development of the WSOP app, Mitch Garber said
We’ve had over 100 million downloads, and we have almost 500 employees in Tel Aviv, Ukraine, Belarus, Santa Monica and now Montreal. We’re one of the largest social mobile app development companies in the world.
Playtika is an Israel based developer and the company responsible of developing the Facebook Slotomania app which is extremely popular. In the month of May 2011, CIE purchased 51% of Playtika for close to $90m and had a two year clause that gave them the option of purchasing the other 49%. CIE took this option to the bank when they completed the entire purchase in early 2012.
CIE is also one of the founding members of the new International Social Gaming Coalition (ISGC). This is a specialized industry association which plans to
establish information sharing agreements between members and aims to educate regulators, governments and media companies about the sector.
The WSOP app brings in a lot of profit as it gets its revenues from a number of different sources including offer a $5 monthly subscription for providing detailed opponent statistics to players.