PokerStars and Full Tilt Approved in New Jersey

New Jersey’s gambling regulators yesterday approved the licences for two of the world’s biggest online poker websites – PokerStars and Full Tilt.

The long-awaited ‘yes’ to Amaya Inc. - which operates both sites - is seen as a major step-forward in New Jersey’s burgeoningonline betting industry, and sees PokerStars re-appear in the US after a 4-year absence.

The NJ Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) confirmed that it had ‘issued waivers’ to six subsidiaries of the gaming giants to operate both PokerStars and Full Tilt through a partnership with Resorts Digital of Atlantic City.

David Baazov, the chairman of Amaya, was pleased that New Jersey had finally found his company’s sites ‘suitable’ for offering real-money online gambling.

NJ officials and other commenters believe the introduction into the ‘Garden State’ of the two giants of online poker– who have some 95 million registered users between them – “could re-shapethe fledgling online betting industry”.

With 17 sites already operating in the jurisdiction, the ‘slow start’ to NJ’s online market has picked up pace recently with a 15.6% rise in year-on-year earnings which could top $150 million by the end of 2015.

The newly-licensed Amaya sites – which players will have to be resident in New Jersey to legally access – will likely boost this figure dramatically, although Resort’s president, Mark Giannantonio, was unsure as to when the sites would go live.

The announcement by NJ’s Enforcement Division brings to a close a lengthy battle by the giants of online poker to gain entry to one of only three legal online markets in the US (along with Nevada and Delaware).

PokerStars had attempted to gain a license twice back in 2013, but was suspendedfrom operating for two years, with the NJ licensing division citing legal problems concerning some of Stars’ executives – including an indictment against the company’s founder.

When PokerStars was bought over in late-2014 by Amaya Inc. the executives involved stepped down and Amaya pledged $400,000 to a trust account which would be used to settle ‘unrecovered’ accounts left over from previous NJ online players - “so that they may reclaim them”, according to a spokesperson.

This money was on top of a staggering $547 million fine which PokerStars paid to the Department of Justice. Although they did not admit any wrong-doing, PokerStars had continued to accept bets after the US had practically made online gambling illegal on April 25th, 2011 - a day which became known as ‘Black Friday’ in the poker world.