Flutter Moves PokerStars Onto Betfair, With Sky Bet and Paddy Power to Follow

Flutter Entertainment is making PokerStars the primary poker product across its UK brands, starting with Betfair from 13 August and adding Sky Bet and Paddy Power later this year. The Betfair offering will be co-branded as "PokerStars on Betfair".

The existing PokerStars UK platform stays live for now, but Flutter plans to migrate the brand, product and its customers fully onto the Betfair Casino platform, with the same intention for Sky Betting and Gaming and Paddy Power. PokerStars will sit alongside each brand's existing online casino, with one shared liquidity pool across all three and the wider PokerStars Network. Flutter has run the approach elsewhere already, integrating PokerStars into FanDuel in the US and into Sisal and SNAI in Italy.

The stated aim is liquidity. "In recent years the market environment has got harder for brands like PokerStars," said Mike Woodbridge, chief commercial officer at PokerStars. "A patchwork of regulation from one market to the next has fragmented the global game and led us to make the difficult decisions to exit certain markets and not enter others. Players have felt it through thinner fields and smaller tournament prizes on our site. We want to do something about that so we're moving to a different model with the aim of improving liquidity and player pools and bringing people back to the poker table."

Betfair managing director Kim Daly called the integration a chance "to bring two iconic brands under one roof", combining poker, sports betting and casino in one product.

The timing sits against a harder UK market. Remote Gaming Duty on online casino GGR rose from 21% to 40% three months ago, and Flutter has just posted a net loss of $296 million for the quarter, with UK and Irish revenue up 4% year on year to $971 million (£719 million). Operators also pay the separate statutory levy, which is funding work such as Glasgow's £3.44 million gambling harm grant. The consolidation also lands during a leadership change: Dan Taylor, currently CEO and president of international brands with UK and Ireland in his remit, takes over as group CEO from Peter Jackson in October.

Flutter acquired PokerStars and Sky Bet together through its 2020 purchase of The Stars Group. In Australia, Tabcorp is pursuing a comparable technology consolidation by buying B2B supplier BetMakers for AU$283 million.