PokerStars to Pull Out of Grey Markets?

Amaya Group have recently acquired the leading online poker room in the world, PokerStars, together with all of its assets. This move gave rise to the hopes that Stars could be granted an access to the regulated American market much easier now that all the lead people from the Black Friday charges were officially out of the picture. But this is only the positive – there are, potentially, many negative things for poker players that could come out of this arrangement.

Amaya acquisition means that Poker Stars become a part of publicly traded company and as such they will have to be much more observant of different gambling regulations in variety of (primarily) European countries. The situation today is such that there are numerous ‘grey area’ markets, like Balkans and Eastern Europe. Then there is Canada and, of course, Asia.

In all these cases, laws pertaining to online gambling are often unclear or, sometimes, more or less non-existent (like Balkans). The real question here is – is it worth it for Amaya and Poker Stars to play with the fire, so to say, now that they are publicly traded company?

Claiming US Market

With the USA and UIGEA, Stars took a big risk by deciding to stay when many other online gambling companies (primarily Party Poker) decided to pull out. This move proved to be very beneficial to them, as it enabled them to easily claim the throne and become the number one room they are today. This is not to say that there weren’t other factors involved in this process, but this decision definitely helped a great deal.

The reason they were able to take this type of risk was the fact they were privately owned company with very limited responsibility. Their decisions had no impact on anything or anyone outside the company itself. Today, however, the situation is different and as PLC, Stars might be in a situation where they have to thread very lightly in the poker grey zones.

Changes to UK Gambling Laws

Another aspect to consider in this whole story are changes to remote gambling laws in the UK. Gambling operators based outside of United Kingdom will have to obtain a license if they wish to provide their services to the UK citizens. In order for Poker Stars to obtain this license, they could be further pushed by UK Gambling Commission to stop operating in these grey markets.

Nobody wants to be bearer of bad news or guess about unpleasant things that could come to life, but from what the things look like right now, it seems that these decisions will become a rather simple game of numbers. On the one hand, Poker Stars will have to maintain the trust of their share holders and that could prove to be a burdensome task. On the other, UK market is probably very big and important for the company, so they might be willing to make certain concessions if their hand was forced.

Final Thoughts

Could we be facing a scenario similar to the Black Friday in the near future? It is hard to say for sure, but it is certainly not out of the realm of possibilities. The reality is that if Poker Stars have to cut off some of the ‘lower value’ countries in order to stay in good grace of share holders and be present on the bigger, more significant markets, they will do it – no questions asked.