Canadian based Stars Group which is the parent company of PokerStars released its third quarter results for the year which proved to be very strong. The company had an increase of $329.4 million in revenues which was a 22 percent year on year increase and saw EBITDA go up by $155.8 million.

The strong revenue growth was a result of online poker, online casino and sports book verticals performing well. Stars Group had depended heavily in the past on online poker and PokerStars which is the number one online poker website in the world contributed a significant portion of its revenues. Things have changed in the last 2 years as the Stars Group decided to expand into online casino and sports betting and used its large online poker database to successfully cross-sell these services.

Online poker helped the company’s player database grow up 2 million new users while online casino brought in an additional 553,000 players while sports betting which has a limited jurisdiction in the United States saw an increase of 270,000 new players. When combined the global player database for the Stars Group increased by 2.1 million new users. Online poker generated $221.4 million in revenue, sports betting and online casino revenues brought in $95.2 million.

Mergers & Acquisitions

Stars Group CEO Rafi Ashkenazi confirmed on a conference call that the company has reduced its debut by half a billion during the last 12 months and has $255 million in cash. The company now feels confident to pursue mergers and acquisitions that would strengthen its online gaming offerings and help the company expand across the globe. The Stars Group is looking to raise $2.5 billion for this purpose and is already in talks with a few companies which Rafi Ashkenazi did not disclose.

Prior to being renamed as the Stars Group, Amaya Inc. pursued a merger in 2016 with British bookmaker William Hill but had to drop the idea after one of William Hill’s major shareholders objected to the merger. Some of the main reasons why William Hill’s shareholder wasn’t keep on going through with the Amaya Inc’s merger was because Amaya had a debt of $3.5 billion and was also getting tarnished in the market due to the fact that its former CEO David Baazov was involved in inside trading allegations.

Since then Amaya Inc. has been renamed to the Stars Group and the company has cut all ties with David Baazov. This could potentially mean that the Stars Group could reopen talks with William Hill as a potential merger would create a gambling giant whose value would be in excess of $5 billion.

Pennsylvania On The Radar

PokerStars has campaigned hard in America to get more states to approve online gambling. After nearly five years, Pennsylvania became the fourth state along with Nevada, New Jersey and Delaware to legalize online gambling and the Stars Group is preparing to enter the newly licensed Pennsylvania market. The company confirmed that it plans to apply for an online gaming license and is looking at potential partners to team up with.

Tags: acquisitions, Amaya Inc, BetStars, mergers, Online Casino, Online Poker, Pennsylvania, PokerStars, Stars Group, William Hill

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 15th, 2017 at 4:43 am and is filed under Poker Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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