Amaya to Become The Stars Group

There are major changes afoot at the company which owns the world’s biggest online poker room, PokerStars, with the Canadian firm Amaya Inc announcing its decision to change its name and move its headquarter location. As a result, it will be renamed The Stars Group Inc and move from Montreal in Quebec to Toronto in the province of Ontario, pending formal approval by its shareholders, with the move designed to improve its corporate name following the bad publicity that has hit the firm over the last few years.
In addition, the move will help further strengthen the company’s brand recognition, and forms part of an ongoing effort to rebrand all its products in PokerStars’s image, including it sports-betting service called BetStars, its daily fantasy sports product called StarsDraft, and the European Poker Tour which has now been rebranded as the PokerStars Championships and PokerStars Festivals.
Having the strong PokerStars brand name associated with its other gambling products will also help boost the business generated from its non-online poker products, as the company seeks to diversify beyond poker. The results have been impressive thus far, too, with Amaya’s poker revenues down to just 69% of total business in Q1 of 2017, compared to a 75% share a year earlier.
In the meantime, Amaya’s poker revenue actually grew by 1.1% to $218.7 million in Q1 of 2017, representing its first bit of growth in three quarters. In addition, Amaya’s overall revenue came in at $317.3 million, up by 10% year-over-year, with net earnings also up by 18.5% to $65.75 million. The positive news includes the number of its casino customers soaring from 470k to 660k in Q1, and its sportsbook customer numbers up to 280k from 170k a year ago. Commenting on its solid results, CEO Rafi Ashkenazi, said:
“We continued our momentum in the first quarter as we execute on our strategy and reinforce the foundation for sustainable and diversified revenue growth, including through the strengthening of our core management team and operations.”