Continuing the trend of deregulation in the world of online gambling, it looks like a merger is going through that would see two of the biggest players in the sphere combining to create a massive platform.
Flutter Entertainment will acquire The Stars Group for a reported $6 billion, with the deal going through in 2020. While the names of these companies might not be familiar to you, their subsidiaries probably are. The Stars Group is the parent company of the largest poker site in the world, PokerStars, while Flutter owns a little company called FanDuel.
This move is no doubt the companies’ response to ongoing deregulation in their market. There has been nothing short of a snowball in the courts where judges are loosening the reigns for online betting to take over. There’s been no bigger win than the U.S. Supreme Court throwing out an old federal law that banned sports gambling, now leaving it up to individual states as to whether or not they want to legalize the practice. States are falling in line in droves. The tax revenue alone is reason enough to approve and then regulate state gambling.
“The opening up of the U.S. sports betting market is perhaps the most exciting development in the industry since the advent of online betting,” Flutter Entertainment CEO Peter Jackson (no, not that Peter Jackson) said on a call.
The apparent intent behind the merger is to create an unstoppable force in the online gambling and sports betting world, particularly in the U.S. According to a presentation the companies gave to investors, they are looking at a combined 13 million active users/customers in over 100 countries.
In terms of online gambling (casinos, sports betting, etc.) in the U.S., there’s no parallel. Of course, this doesn’t mean they’re ready to take on the rest of the world. The competition to find a good online casino or sports betting platform is unparalleled to the U.S. To top it off, this merger places them as the largest in the world.
Gambling is big business and with the advent of the internet and, almost of equal importance, the smartphone, there’s no way that wasn’t going to be taken advantage of in a big way.
