Flutter is integrating its online poker behemoth brand PokerStars with sports betting and iCasino giant FanDuel in the U.S., transitioning PokerStars’ offering in its three active states to the FanDuel platform.
PokerStars publicly confirmed the move on Tuesday, noting that it will soon be reworked as PokerStars Exclusively on FanDuel in Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. SBC Americas understands that PokerStars began notifying players in all of those states directly via email in recent days.
A FanDuel spokesperson said that the integration of PokerStars will create a best-in-class poker experience exclusively on FanDuel via a dedicated poker app and desktop site. As all play will migrate to FanDuel, PokerStars’ existing U.S. sites will shut down and players will need to create a new FanDuel Casino account if they do not already have one.
Integrating with FanDuel means that players will gain access to features such as a shared account and wallet across the PokerStars poker, FanDuel Casino and FanDuel Sportsbook verticals.
Adding Pennsylvania to the pool
As part of the move to FanDuel, Pennsylvania players will now be able to pool with players in the other two states on a single FanDuel-run PokerStars network. PokerStars has been combining its Michigan and New Jersey pools since late 2022 under the Multi-State Internet Gaming Agreement (MSIGA), which Pennsylvania officially joined last year.
Adding Pennsylvania to the shared liquidity will mean bigger games, larger prize pools and a broader selection of tournaments and cash games across those regulated markets, said the FanDuel spokesperson.
FanDuel and PokerStars have launched dedicated PokerStars Exclusively on FanDuel Info Hub pages for all three states. PokerStars will also operate exclusively under the FanDuel banner in Ontario, although that Canadian province does not currently allow player pooling outside of its borders.
FanDuel did not confirm an official launch date for the transition, but the Info Hub pages note that PokerStars Rewards will end on March 13 in U.S. markets and PokerStars Casino Progressive Jackpots will be removed on April 1 in the three states. New welcome offers for the new FanDuel-integrated platform will be given to not only new PokerStars sign-ups on FanDuel, but also existing PokerStars customers.
FanDuel’s latest gaming expansion
PokerStars has more than two decades of history as a brand. It first launched in 2001 and rose to prominence in the early 2000s, although it faded away from the U.S. after online poker’s “Black Friday” in 2011.
Flutter acquired the company in 2020 but has kept PokerStars and FanDuel separate until now.
By uniting the two brands on the platform of the market-leading sportsbook and casino platform in the U.S., as well as by adding Pennsylvania to its pooling, Flutter is primed to ramp up its poker operations. It also adds another string to FanDuel’s bow after the company launched its FanDuel Predicts prediction markets business late last year, to add to its historic daily fantasy sports (DFS), sports betting and online casino offerings.
PokerStars on FanDuel has multi-state competitors
Using the dominant position in holds in U.S. sports betting and casino, FanDuel will now likely ramp up its poker marketing for PokerStars. The operator will also surely see potential for cross-sell between its various verticals, with the chance to funnel sports bettors and casino gamblers into poker, and vice versa.
How PokerStars will market once it is part of the FanDuel network remains to be seen. Rush Street Interactive-owned BetRivers Poker, for instance, uses high-profile poker pros Phil Galfond and Phil Hellmuth for marketing and events.
For now, with a three-state player pool, PokerStars will compete with several other major multi-state poker operators in the U.S., including BetRivers, BetMGM Poker and NSUS-owned WSOP Online.
In addition to PokerStars’ three U.S. markets on FanDuel, the MSIGA also includes Delaware, Nevada and West Virginia. WSOP and BetRivers both operate four-state poker pools under MSIGA; WSOP is active in PokerStars’ three states plus Nevada, while BetRivers Poker is operational in Delaware, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia but not currently New Jersey.
In the future, perhaps expansion could be on the cards for PokerStars. Delaware is out of the question given that Rush Street Interactive’s BetRivers holds a legal monopoly as the sole operator, while FanDuel burned its bridges as a potential gaming operator in Nevada last year over its expansion into prediction markets. But West Virginia could be ripe for PokerStars to expand its pool.
Eight states currently offer regulated online poker, also including non-MSIGA members Connecticut and Rhode Island. Meanwhile, Maine’s bills to legalize online casino gaming, which passed into law in January, also authorized online poker and other states such as Illinois have legislation in play this year to legalize the vertical.
