Poll: Will PokerStars online casino dominate in Spain and Italy?
Amaya CEO David Baazov confirms PokerStars online casino will launch in Italy and Spain by year-end, but will it threaten existing market leaders?
Last week Amaya Gaming CEO David Baazov let slip plans to launch a PokerStars-branded online casino in Spain and Italy by the end of the year after the Canadian company completed its US$4.9bn acquisition of parent company the Rational Group earlier this month.
The chief executive also revealed Rational’s Full Tilt brand had soft-launched to a small number of players in Spain, with plans to increase marketing and roll out the platform in Italy and other markets in the coming months.
“The launch of casino has only been done on a small subset, only on Full Tilt,” Baazov said. “This calendar year we expect it [online casino] to launch on PokerStars as it relates to Spain and Italy. And to have a broader roll out in terms of Full Tilt,” Baazov said.
“There has been no major marketing push behind it [Full Tilt casino] yet. The company has been focussed on ensuring its casino platform is up to its high technological standards, we do not want to provide any disruption to the core poker offering,” he added.
The online casino vertical has been an area of strong growth for some operators so far this year with Spanish online casino market leader 888 seeing global revenues increase 15% YoY in Q2 2014 to $53m, while William Hill, which is focused on growing Italian and Spanish revenues, posted a 24% YoY increase during the same period.
But can PokerStars, which is the market leader in poker in both Spain and Italy, pose a significant threat to other online casino operators in these crucial regulated markets?
Will they dominate the market like they have done in poker, or will Stars’ struggle to cross-sell between its core poker product and its new casino platform?
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