Pokerstars Opens Its Player Pool to Rival Brands. Here’s Why

Pokerstars Pitches Its Tables to Outside Operators

Pokerstars is now selling access to its online poker tables. A newly launched site for the Pokerstars Network, the shared-liquidity model its parent company Flutter Entertainment announced in August, invites outside operators to plug into its player pool, tournaments and brands, Pokerstrategy reported Tuesday.

The site claims 12 licenses, more than 130 countries and over 3 million players, billing the network as “the largest regulated liquidity pool.” Partners are promised “immediate access to the world’s most recognisable, favoured and trusted brand in poker,” including the Sunday Million, Spin & Go and the European Poker Tour.

Operators can run Pokerstars products alongside their own branding or take a white-label setup, the site says, while Pokernews reported that they can also franchise the Pokerstars brand outright.

So far, the network has only taken in Flutter’s own brands. Betfair Poker left Playtech’s iPoker network to join on Aug. 13, and Paddy Power and Sky Poker are due to follow later this year. Pokerstars’ U.K. customers will move to the co-branded Pokerstars on Betfair site.

The only case study on the new site is Sisal, which is also owned by Flutter since August 2022. The Italian operator replaced its previous poker provider with Pokerstars in December 2024, and the site says its poker revenue has since risen more than 50%, with network liquidity delivering over 55% market share in Italy. Both brands sit in the international division run by Dan Taylor, who was named Flutter president in May and becomes group CEO on Oct. 1.

A Shift in Strategy

Pokerstars, which launched in 2001, led online poker for years before GGPoker overtook it around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pokerstrategy noted. In its snapshot of PokerScout data, GGPoker had 9,292 active cash-game players, Pokerstars had 2,479, and crypto poker room CoinPoker had 2,285. The iPoker network that Betfair, Paddy Power and Sky Poker are leaving had just 173, by comparison.

Flutter’s second-quarter report flagged “an overall decline in activity on the Pokerstars global platform,” Card Player reported. When the network was announced in August, Pokerstars Chief Commercial Officer Mike Woodbridge blamed regulation: “A patchwork of regulations from one market to the next has fragmented the global game and led us to make difficult decisions to exit certain markts and not enter others. Players have felt it through thinner fields and smaller tournament prizes on our site.”

GGPoker already pairs its own sites with third-party skins such as Olybet in the Baltics and Danske Spil in Denmark, Pokerfuse noted. Flutter’s own framing has so far been inward-looking. The August announcement described “rebuilding liquidity in partnership, beginning with other Flutter brands,” and Pokerstars ambassador David Lappin told Pokernews the model lets “companies that are part of the Flutter family” join from locales where Pokerstars doesn’t operate.