Managing Editor
BetRivers Poker got off to a promising start last year, looking like it might successfully disrupt the U.S. online poker market. Yet, even with the former market leader PokerStars in a tailspin, it BetRivers hasn’t been able to carry that momentum into 2026.
The new kid on the block debuted in October 2024 but really started to make inroads when its home state of Pennsylvania joined the multi-state liquidity pool in April 2025. That allowed BetRivers to launch in several new markets all at once, including two — Delaware and West Virginia — where it’s still the only game in town.
Until that point, it had held roughly 2% of the total U.S. regulated market. In the course of just a few months, it quadrupled that share, peaking at an estimated 8% in November 2025. Yet, although it seemed destined for double-digits at that time, it has failed to progress any further.
PokerScout estimates that the BetRivers brand earned $616,000 in poker revenue in March 2026, equating to 7.5% of the total market. That’s virtually unchanged from an estimated $623,000 in November, even as the current front-runners, BetMGM and WSOP, have continued to pad their lead.
The good news is that it still has one more market to expand into, but it’s anyone’s guess when that New Jersey launch is coming.
Industry Growth Has Also Stopped
BetRivers’ position would be better if it was holding a steady share of a growing market. Unfortunately, that is another area in which momentum from 2025 has failed to carry over into 2026.
Although online casino gaming continues to be a rapidly-growing industry in the U.S., online poker has grown slowly if at all for most of the past decade. The main exceptions were during the COVID-19 pandemic, when retail cardrooms shut down, and last year, when the networking of Pennsylvania with other states briefly rekindled players’ interest.
From May to October 2025, annual growth rates were in the double-digits. That trend stopped abruptly in November, just as BetRivers’ popularity hit its peak. Since then, the market has been contracting somewhat.
That’s worrisome, as we haven’t yet reached the anniversary of Pennsylvania joining the network. If post-merger 2026 traffic is already lower than pre-merger 2025, we might be in for a nasty surprise once we’re comparing monthly numbers to last summer’s highs.
Assuming typical seasonality continues, by June the annual growth rate could be in the double-digits again, but this time with a minus sign in front.
FanDuel Poker is the Big Question Mark
Of course, this April has also seen a change at least as significant as Pennsylvania joining the multi-state pool last year. It remains to be seen whether it’s a good change or a bad one.
PokerStars, which once held nearly half the market on its own, is no more. Flutter, which bought the brand in 2020, has elected to retire it for the American market. Players on the platform were migrated over to Flutter’s new FanDuel-branded platform at the beginning of April.
Reactions have been mixed, but we won’t be able to measure the response in dollar terms until April revenue numbers are released sometime after the midway point of May.
What we can say was that players reduced their volume in March ahead of the switch-over. PokerStars’ market share dropped over three percentage points in March, from 24.0% in January and February to just 20.8%, an all-time low.
That drop comes after a period in which it seems PokerStars had found its new floor. Its market share had been in freefall from mid-2024 until November 2025. However, it then enjoyed a few months of relative good health even as the rest of the market declined.
Unfortunately for BetRivers, the players who abandoned PokerStars in advance of the brand change all seem to have gone to its larger rivals. WSOP’s market share jumped from 28.4% to 29.9%, while market leader BetMGM grew from 40.6% to 41.8%. It now rivals the level of dominance PokerStars enjoyed in its heyday.
