Stars purchasing SlyBet, like two pigs in sh*t

While I've seen various people claim this, it just isn't true.

Tencent, Activision Blizzard, amongst many others, are many multiple times bigger than the Stars Group here, and are all obviously online gaming companies. That's pretty clear and unarguable.



A little more arguable is if you limit the comparison to "online gambling companies". I'm obviously no expert on financial stuff, but from reading a little, I gather that according to Yahoo Finance, Stars Group currently have a market capitalisation of USD 4.189 billion, and are issuing 20% new shares, so after this deal, they'll presumably have a market capitalisation of USD 5.027 billion.

Meanwhile, Yahoo Finance says that PaddyPower Betfair has a market capitalisation of GBP6.285 billion. This is about USD8.772 billion.

So PaddyPower Betfair is about 60% bigger than the enlarged Stars Group, it appears to me.

Market cap only accounts for shares outstanding, not the total number of issued shares.

Deal looks a touch expensive on its face, but it should be noted that if the Supreme Court punts on PASPA (we are expecting a decision in the next few weeks), this deal will be a huge win for Stars. They will quickly be able to leverage their PokerStars brand cache in the U.S. together with the Sky sports betting infrastructure to take an early lead in online sports betting. This could actually be great news for legalization of online poker since certain states are likely to legislate the two issues together. Bout to get interesting!

TSGI has been a monster stock this year, but may have a ways to go...

Yeah the claim is certainly meant to be largest online gambling company, and the confusion arises from the gambling industry's propensity to use the euphemistic term "gaming" for "gambling." You make a fair point though, you can't have it both ways; if you want to consider yourself a gaming company, then you're going up against bigger players.

It's not even the largest online gambling company. PaddyPower Betfair is bigger, and so is Bet365.

The only way you can do the gymnastics to thread it all together is by ranking company size by "revenue" (rather than, you know, normal company size metrics such as company value) excluding privately listed companies, and excluding revenue that comes from other sources..

Rumours about that the UK might increase tax on gambling revenues (to make up for a loss of tax from restrictions on bookies roulette machines) which would reduce the value of this deal.

Stars have now stated they will almost certainly merge the sky poker player pool into stars but keep sky as a skin in the UK because the brand is strong.

when/where did they announce this (Q3 call, social media ...)?

https://pokerindustrypro.com/news/ar...Q5uJFySgcoyYbs

Sorry I should of included that initially