PokerStars Opens Network to Rivals, Promising Access to 3 Million Players

PokerStars is going outside the Flutter family. The company launched a dedicated sales site for the PokerStars Network, actively pitching its shared-player pool to third-party operators — a sharp turn from a model that, until now, pretty much served Flutter’s own brands exclusively.

The sales pitch is aggressive. PokerStars claims the network holds 12 licenses spanning more than 130 countries, with over 3 million registered players. It markets itself as the “largest regulated liquidity pool” in online poker. Operators who sign on can tap into some of the most recognized names in the game — the Sunday Million, Spin & Go, the European Poker Tour. And they get a choice: bolt PokerStars products onto their existing brand, or go full white-label. That’s a fairly flexible offer by industry standards, and it’s clearly designed to lower the barrier for smaller operators who want liquidity without rebuilding from scratch.

Flutter Brands Moving First

So far, the network’s growth has been internal. Betfair Poker left Playtech’s iPoker network on August 13 and moved over. Paddy Power and Sky Poker are next in line. PokerStars’ U.K. players will shift to a co-branded PokerStars on Betfair site. Flutter is basically consolidating its poker assets under one roof before swinging the door open to outsiders.

The iPoker network, for what it’s worth, recorded just 173 active cash-game players in recent tracking data. That’s a pretty stark number. Whatever Betfair Poker was getting from Playtech, it wasn’t traffic.

Sisal’s Numbers Make the Case

PokerStars needs a proof-of-concept to sell this thing, and Sisal is it. Flutter bought the Italian operator in August 2022. In December 2024, Sisal swapped out its previous poker provider and plugged into the PokerStars Network. What happened next is the kind of result you put in every sales deck: poker revenue jumped more than 50%, and Sisal’s network liquidity grabbed over 55% of market share in Italy. Both companies sit inside Flutter’s international division, so the incentives were aligned — but the numbers are real, and they’re hard to ignore.

The GGPoker Gap Is the Real Story

Here’s the uncomfortable backdrop. PokerStars built its name as the biggest poker site on the planet, launching back in 2001. For years, that dominance felt untouchable. Then GGPoker came, the COVID-19 pandemic reshuffled the deck, and the gap widened fast.

Per PokerScout data, GGPoker currently runs 9,292 active cash-game players. PokerStars sits at 2,479. CoinPoker, which focuses on crypto players, has 2,285. That’s a brutal comparison for a brand that once owned this space. PokerStars isn’t just trailing — it’s in a different conversation entirely.

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Mike Woodbridge, PokerStars Chief Commercial Officer, pointed to inconsistent regulations across markets as a key factor. Varying rules have forced PokerStars to pull out of certain regions or avoid them altogether, which cuts into player participation and shrinks prize pools. Smaller pools mean less action. Less action means players go elsewhere. It’s a cycle that’s hard to break without fresh liquidity.

Flutter’s second-quarter report flagged declining activity on the PokerStars global platform. That’s not a minor footnote — it’s the reason this network push is happening now.

GGPoker already runs this playbook. It works with third-party operators like Olybet in the Baltics and Danske Spil in Denmark. Those partnerships brought players into the GGPoker ecosystem from markets the platform couldn’t reach on its own. PokerStars is basically copying that model, which is probably the right call given the traffic numbers.

David Lappin, a PokerStars ambassador, said the new setup lets companies inside the Flutter family join from regions where PokerStars doesn’t directly operate. That’s a meaningful detail — it’s not just about outside operators, it’s about unlocking markets that were basically off-limits before.

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Can it work? Unclear. The Sisal case is encouraging, but Italy is one market with a specific regulatory environment and a Flutter-owned operator that had every incentive to make the switch. Convincing genuinely independent third-party brands to trust PokerStars’ infrastructure — and share player data within a pooled system — is a harder sell. Operators have their own brands to protect and their own tech stacks to manage.

No specific operator names have been announced beyond the Flutter brands already in the pipeline. No timeline for additional integrations. No details on commercial terms.

GGPoker currently runs 9,292 active cash-game players to PokerStars’ 2,479.