PokerStars parent company launches sports betting platform

The parent company of the world’s most famous online poker room, PokerStars, has decided to get into sports betting in the Garden State. Amaya, one of the main firms in the gaming industry, recently announced its new sports betting platform that will offer wagering services through PokerStars. Amaya is going to start with just a few selected markets like New Jersey, for just the first 3 months of this year 2015. The gaming firm wants to test the waters as the online sports betting industry is not secure yet. This is not fresh news for us as Amaya already announced last year 2014 on November, sports wagering services. At that time, the company was offering casino games on the PokerStars’ platform, but limited to the Spanish market first. The traffic from PokerStars to its online casino platform was another of the tests that the gaming firm needed to continue with the company’s development; and the good numbers from cross selling, around 30 percent, has been one of the main reasons for Amaya to launch the sports betting platform.

The future of PokerStars in the sports betting industry is on its doorstep. The gaming firm wants to get to every single one of the online players in the world by offering the widest range of games in the industry. However, this decision has not made poker players very happy. Many think of other gambling ways as very addictive games. Right after the announcement of PokerStars’ online casino, Victoria Coren, member of the PokerStars Pro team since 2007, announced that the gaming firm was making a bad movement. Immediately after that, the poker community announced their support with the team member and their disappointment with the site. The member of the PokerStars Pro team said: “I cannot professionally and publicly endorse it, even passively by silence with my name still over the shop. Poker is the game I love, poker is what I signed up to promote. The question I am probably asked most often in interviews is about the danger of addiction, going ‘skint’ and so on. I’m always careful to explain the difference between the essentially fair nature of poker, where we all take each other on with the same basic chance, and those casino games at unfavorable odds which can be (especially online) so dangerous for the vulnerable or desperate.”