Canadian based Amaya Inc is the parent company to Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, two of the biggest online poker brands in the world. The company also ventured into the fantasy sports betting market in 2015 when it acquired Victiv, a sports betting company and renamed it as StarsDraft.
The sports betting market is dominated by DraftKings and FanDuel who control 90% of the market and the remaining ten percent is mostly shared by StarsDraft and Yahoo sports betting. It now appears that StarsDraft will lose a lot of market share as Amaya Inc confirmed that it was going to stop StarsDraft from operating in a number of American states.
This is because there has been a lot of controversy of late surrounding the fantasy sports betting market as state gaming regulators in Nevada have termed the DraftKings gaming offering as one that is similar to online poker and in need of a gaming license. As a result, the Nevada gaming association decided to ban DraftKings from operating in the state. The commission is also looking to conduct a detailed review into the fantasy sports betting market and then fix new regulations that will govern fantasy sports.
Amaya Inc has decided not to take any risks and prefers to stop operating its StarsDraft website instead of waiting for its website to be banned. The company’s two websites PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker recently got approval to operate online poker websites in New Jersey after a long review process that looked into Amaya Inc’s reputation of conforming to gaming regulations.
The company released a statement which said
We have previously called for state regulation and licensing of DFS to ensure consumer protection and strict government oversight of operators. Prior to the launch of StarsDraft and based on a thorough review of the regulatory environment at the time, Amaya decided not to launch StarsDraft in jurisdictions where many of our competitors continue to operate today, including Michigan
. Amaya Inc has pulled out of Nevada and Florida as of now and have informed their players that they will still have access to their funds and informed them that it could be withdrawn at any time.
The move to temporarily withdraw StarsDraft from these states will not have a major financial impact on Amaya Inc but actually protect its online poker interests as the company is determined to have a clean reputation in the United States that will allow it to quickly launch online poker websites as more states legalize online poker.
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