Editor
When Pennsylvania authorized multistate online poker in April, most of PokerStars’ competitors were ready to start sharing traffic from day one. Two months later, it’s now the only site not doing so. May revenue numbers for Pennsylvania and New Jersey show that the consequences of the delay have been immediate.
For one thing, it looks to be on the cusp of ceding the number one spot in Pennsylvania to the combination of BetMGM Poker and Borgata Poker. (Those are two front ends for the same site, just with different branding and market access partnerships.)
PokerStars’ slowness to network is surprising, in that it’s the exact opposite of how things played out in Michigan. There, PokerStars was the first site up and running with a multistate network by a wide margin.
Even BetRivers, which needed to launch entirely new sites in other states, has done so while PokerStars sits on its heels. The company’s only explanation for the delay is “global priorities.”
PokerStars’ Dominance Comes Crashing Down in Pennsylvania
Some changes in market share lead are more noteworthy than others. Sometimes, we see two top dogs trade it back and forth on almost a monthly basis.
That’s not the case here.
PokerStars has never been anything other than the number one poker site in Pennsylvania. In fact, with only one previous exception, it has generated more revenue each month than all other sites in the state put together.
Networking in Pennsylvania began just a few days before the end of April, so that month’s numbers don’t say much. In May, however, PokerStars’ daily average revenue tumbled 19%, while all other sites posted big gains.
In the process, its adjusted (taxable) revenue fell below $1 million for the first time in state history, to $994,937. Pennsylvania doesn’t report gross revenue, but PokerScout estimates that PokerStars’ gross revenue was still narrowly above $1 million for May, though likely to drop below that threshold in June.
On its own, BetMGM Poker leapt 41% to $724,581. Unfortunately, the Borgata skin’s revenue is mixed together with BetRivers’ in Pennsylvania’s reporting system. However, the historical ratio between the two skins suggests that their combined revenue for May would have been around $955,000, very close to overtaking PokerStars.
Whether or not it has lost the market lead, PokerStars’ share of Pennsylvania revenue was just 36.2% in May. Only once before has it dropped below 50%: in November 2024, when it briefly dipped to 48.4% before recovering.
WSOP was the big winner for the month, up 85.2%, thanks in part to hype for the summer’s live World Series of Poker and associated online bracelet events.
New Jersey Results Echo Pennsylvania’s
The situation in New Jersey is different in that PokerStars was not the first-place site to begin with. WSOP had a two-year head start there before PokerStars arrived in 2015, which impeded customer acquisition. Meanwhile, BetMGM-Borgata has surged into a comfortable lead in the Garden State, perhaps thanks to the brand power of the actual Borgata in Atlantic City. (Unlike in Pennsylvania, BetMGM’s revenue is evenly split between those two skins, while it also operates a third skin under the PartyPoker brand.)
However, although PokerStars has less to lose in New Jersey, its results tell a similar story to those in Pennsylvania. Some players appear to be abandoning it in favor of the other sites, which now have much more traffic due to the inclusion of Pennsylvania in the network. Having more players means it’s easier to find games, sit-and-goes start more quickly, and tournament prize pools are larger. BetMGM also celebrated the unification of the player pools with some large tournaments and promos.
PokerStars’ New Jersey poker revenue dropped 16.0%, almost as much as it did in Pennsylvania. BetMGM’s network saw an increase of 20.4%, and WSOP was up 13.8%. (BetRivers Poker does not operate in New Jersey currently.)
Are PokerStars’ Glory Days Over?
PokerStars didn’t specify what its “global priorities” were, but it has been steadily falling behind upstart GGPoker on the world stage. Compounding that is GGPoker’s acquisition last year of the World Series of Poker.
PokerStars had been the world’s number one site by traffic for 15 years, from the time it overtook Full Tilt until 2021, when it slipped behind GGPoker for the first time. Any hope of catching up disappeared in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. To avoid jeopardizing its US reputation, PokerStars stopped serving Russia, which was the largest market for its international site. GGPoker, meanwhile, pulled out its flagship skin but continued to allow Russian players on other brands in its network, such as PokerOK.
Part of the difference may come down to focus. GGPoker remains privately owned and entirely dedicated to poker. PokerStars, on the other hand, has been owned by Flutter since 2020, playing second fiddle to the likes of FanDuel and aiming to branch out into other verticals. In Pennsylvania, it makes twice as much money from its casino as from poker, while in New Jersey, the split between the verticals is about even.
It would be overstating things to say that PokerStars appears to be losing interest in the US. However, Flutter is very obviously focused on FanDuel in that market, and the lack of legislative success in bringing online poker to new states limits PokerStars’ upside there. It’s probably fair to say that the lack of urgency to network Pennsylvania or launch in West Virginia indicates that PokerStars doesn’t feel the same pressure it once did to be the market leader. That, in turn, is making room for BetMGM—once the third-place newcomer—to try to establish itself as the number one operator in the US.
