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PokerStars Buys Up Sky Betting For Whopping $4.7 Billion

shooting star in the sky

PokerStars augmented its poker and gambling empire this week with the acquisition of the U.K.’s Sky Betting & Gambling for $4.7 billion in cash and stock.

It’s the single biggest acquisition that PokerStars has made since Amaya took over in 2014 and pundits are calling it a pivotal moment for Stars Group CEO Rafi Ashkenazi.

The Sky Betting portfolio includes gambling, sports betting, and poker verticals with a strong integration into the U.K. market. The separate brands include Sky Bet, Sky Vegas, Sky Casino, and Sky Poker.

Sky Poker TV, in particular, played a key role in attracting new players to poker in the U.K. during the mid-2000s.

The Stars Group has allegedly been seeking a large acquisition for several years now. It previously considered a merger with William Hill in 2016.

With the Sky Betting acquisition, the Stars Group becomes the largest publicly listed gaming company based on revenue.

A “Landmark” Moment for Stars Group

The $4.7 billion Sky Betting acquisition is a truly staggering amount considering PokerStars itself was acquired for $4.9 billion in 2014.

To put things in perspective a UK venture capitalist company called CVC purchased Sky Betting for $1.14 million in 2014. That means the company will make out with a profit of approximately $3.7 billion in less than four years time.

“The acquisition of Sky Betting & Gaming is a landmark moment in The Stars Group’s history,” said Rafi Ashkenazi in a statement.

“SBG operates one of the world’s fastest growing sportsbooks and is one of the United Kingdom’s leading gaming providers. SBG’s premier sports betting product is the ideal complement to our industry-leading poker platform.

“The ability to offer two low-cost acquisition channels of this magnitude provides The Stars Group with great growth potential and will significantly increase our ability to create winning moments for our customers.”

Stars Group Targets Growth in Sports Betting, Casino

For the last few years, the Stars Group successfully grew its sports betting and casino businesses. The company wanted to avoid being completely reliant on the main tenant of its business: online poker.

The Sky Betting acquisition seems to be another step in the Stars Group’s attempt to become a worldwide gaming brand rather than simply the world’s biggest online poker operator.

With the deal, the Stars Group get better access to regulated markets like the U.K. It also gets more exposure for sports betting.

Sky Betting is currently home to the largest U.K. player base. It is also a leader in the mobile space. Over 80 percent of its revenues coming from mobile.

The Stars Group already reduced its reliance on online poker to 67 percent based on recently released earnings for 2017. Poker represented 73 percent of the Stars Group’s earnings in 2016. The Sky Betting acquisition will likely drive that number down even further.

Furthermore, Sky Betting’s strong sports betting segment could conceivably represent customer acquisition for PokerStars. After all, crossover players might take a shot at playing cards.

PokerStars, Sky Poker Merge in the Cards?

The emphasis on the deal is on sports betting and casino. However, Sky Betting does have a poker component too. It’s unclear what will happen to the site long term.

For the time being, Ashkenazi mentioned that Sky Betting and PokerStars will remain separate entities. In a year or two, there seems to be a fair chance that the Stars Group will want to share liquidity between the brands, similar to the approach that was used with Full Tilt Poker.

If Sky Poker rolled into PokerStars, that would mean the largest pool of online poker players would get even bigger.

Regardless of how the Sky Betting acquisition plays out, there’s no doubt it comes at a huge cost to the Stars Group. Only time will tell if Ashkenazi’s big bet pays off in the long term.

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PokerStars Officially Enters Indian Market with PokerStars.IN

older Indian man on laptop

There’s a new way to play PokerStars in India as of this week.

The Stars Group’s PokerStars.IN went live on Wednesday with a wealth of features for Indian players, including the ability to play special localized tournaments and use Indian Rupees on the site.

The site was launched in conjunction with the Sugal & Damani Group, which is the largest state government lottery operator in India.

Walled-off versions of the PokerStars software have existed for years and Pokerscout even monitors traffic separately for:

  • PokerStars.EU
  • PokerStars.IT
  • PokerStars.FR
  • PokerStars.ES
  • PokerStars.NJ

The vast majority of Indian players will be able to play on PokerStars.IN with support for both desktop and mobile devices.

Tantalizing market for online poker operators

The launch of PokerStars.IN has been a long time coming with Indian poker going from a slow simmer to a rolling boil over the last few years.

It helps that Indian poker pros like PokerStars own Aditya Agarwal as well as Kunal Patni, Aditya Sushant, and Raghav Bansal have been blowing up on the international poker circuit.

Indian-American Nipun Java grabbed numerous headlines last summer when he managed to win not one but two gold bracelets at the 2017 WSOP.

For years online poker existed in a legal grey area in India but that era appears to be over. The very first online poker license was awarded back in 2016 and several more have been handed out since.

It also appears that poker is getting closer to being classified as a skill game like chess or rummy.

The market represents a potential goldmine for operators thanks to its massive 1.3+ billion-person population.

PokerStars CEO Rafi Ashkenazi has previously estimated the Indian market to be worth $150 million per year and growing.

Indian players locked out of global PokerStars

The downside to the new PokerStars.IN is that it appears Indian players will be losing access to the much larger PokerStars.com.

That’s common practice, as many of the jurisdictions where PokerStars operates restrict the player pool to that region only.

That means that players will likely miss out on flagship PokerStars like the Sunday Million.

On the bright side, PokerStars.IN will have its own exclusive tournaments and will be launching with a series of freerolls for players.

It didn’t take Agarwal long to take advantage of such tournaments as he took down the Hot 2500 earlier this week.

The majority of Indians will be able to play on PokerStars.IN but those who reside in states where online poker has been deemed illegal will not get access at this point in time.

PokerStars adds Indian Pro Muskan Sethi

 

It’s full speed ahead for PokerStars in India and the site also recently announced a new player acquisition.

New Delhi’s Muskan Sethi is the latest poker pro to don the trademark PokerStars red spade.

Sethi originally worked in the fashion industry but found the work unfulfilling and moved into social work.

As a social worker, Sethi found the time to play a little poker on the site and qualified for the 2014 PokerStars Shark Cage promotion where she finished runner-up to Mike Tindal.

After that Sethi picked up a poker sponsorship and even got a nod from President Ram Nath Kovind in an event honoring 100 Indian women who had achieved success in fields traditionally dominated by men.

On the poker side, Sethi has accumulated over $100,000 in online cashes in addition to another $44,000 in live tournament scores.

She will be joining the PokerStars team as an ambassador for the Indian market. Both Sethi and her teammate Agarwal will help promote poker as a skill game in India.