PartyGaming’s recent year-end results showed a dramatic shift in fortunes away from poker to the casino vertical.

Even though the business was founded on its poker client and high end US marketing effort, it looks like the PartyGaming group is ready to focus squarely on the sector that is currently generating the higher volumes of revenue: the online casino.

A new three part strategy is in place that will consist of targeting pure play casino players, rather than persuading poker players to shift platforms and try their luck at blackjack, roulette, or the slots.

Pure play casino players stay with the casino for twice as long as players who gamble elsewhere.

Jim Ryan said: “Here is why this is important. Historically, we have acquired all of our casino players from our poker database. That's been great, because our cost of acquisitions hasn't been particularly high, but it hasn't been particularly good for our poker liquidity in a challenged competitive environment where we need to grow that liquidity.

“What we have now started to do is go and acquire pure-play casino players. The magic of a pure-play casino player is that their lifetime value is twice that of a poker consumer who moves over to casino. So our casino offering will grow in 2010 and beyond.”

Ryan was speaking yesterday following the release of PartyGaming’s 2009 year-end results, in which the company revealed 12% year-on-year growth in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in casino, in contrast to a fall-off in poker EBITDA of 44%.

To achieve this goal, PartyCasino will continue to add more and more branded casino content and offer players ‘life-changing’ jackpots. Ryan said: "We will have 50 new games this year. The content will be exciting… branded content.

“The second aspect of the strategy is focused on having life-changing events. It's a jackpot-based strategy. Today we have the largest reset value in our Melon Madness Jackpot [which] starts at US$1.5m. Nobody else can match that in the sector. So we will continue to bring those life-changing events to the consumer.”

In April, PartyGaming reached a deal with the US authorities for its business in the US before the UIGEA, a indication that it hopes to re-enter the US market with a licence should any regulatory system for online poker such as those proposed by Congressman Barney Frank or senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Judd Gregg be approved by lawmakers.