If we define the market as online sports betting in the uk then this merger will have about 60% of the market. Is this 80% thing still actually how they figure things out? I doubt that.

Bet365 have 25% of that pie and I reckon they might be quaking in their boots actually.

I imagine that the lawyers from Flutter and Stars will argue that the market should be defined more widely than that (sports betting and/or gambling generally). But let's assume that they do define the market so tightly for the purposes here.

I'm surprised to learn the combined brands would have 60% of the market. Do you have a public source for that?
I'd imagine that CMA are going to look for evidence that consumers have the potential to be harmed. Are Flutter/Stars going to be able to get away with offering noncompetitive odds? That seems like a difficult argument to make, but then again, they own price comparison sites like oddschecker, which might work in your favour.

If one of the alleged anti-competitive operators also owns the leading price comparison website, like they do here, then that seems like something that might count against them - especially since they appear to keep that ownership pretty secretive (eg, I see no mention of it on https://www.oddschecker.com/ )

I got my info from a recent article on silentbet who in turn got their info from the latest Gambling Compliance report. I was surprised to see PaddyPower having almost the same share as bet365.

https://silentbet.com/uk-online-bett...ry-statistics/

Considering Betfair have their exchange on the same site as their sportsbook then they're never going to offer odds with too much of an overround so will always stay competitive.

With 5 firms controlling 83% of the market I personally hope the cma do not green light this.

am i stupid ... "UK Bookmakers by Market Share[s]" add up to 103%

Betfair & Paddypower = 42% (Flutter)
bet356 = 25%
Ladbrokes & Coral = 21% (GVC)
Skybet = TSG (15%)

but even if Betfair = Paddypower = 21%

why is Ladborkes 11% and Coral 10% and not Ladbrokes = Coral = 11% ?


and the 1st graph shows 4 companies (bet365, paddypower, betfair & sky) add up to 87%

what 5 companies add up to 83%

am i missing the obvious or are there some mistakes in the article


edit:

maybe

bet356 = 25%
Betfair & Paddypower = 21% (Flutter)
Ladbrokes & Coral = 21% (GVC)
Skybet = TSG (15%)

that would be 4 companies adding up 82%

Ye I think they made Ladbrokes and Coral share separate, as if 2 entities, but grouped BF and PP share without actually grouping them on their chart.

It's an affiliate site too, so it could be absolute mumbo jumbo.

Your right coral is a separate entity.

It wouldn't be treated as such if the cma were looking at any monopoly issues.

JohnCleese,

You make a much more compelling argument for CMA to take action (rather than just wave it through) than I expected. I'm still somewhat skeptical, but instead of thinking there was a <5% chance they'd take action, I now think there's a ~20% chance they'll do something here.

Gossip: Grosvenor may get involved with this somehow and take skybet if cma turn this down. Told to me by a guy at a poker table.

More wishful thinking than anything with any factual merit I reckon.

Anyone think its possible that paddypower, and betfair will leave the ipoker skin now and migrate to pokerstars software, taking all customers with them? similar to what coral recently done with partypoker?

Stars have already bought SkyBet and their poker arm. From what I gather, though nothing is set in stone yet and there are other possible outcomes, they intend to move all Sky players to Stars but keep Sky as a separate skin. I'd bet that the exact same thing will happen to PP and BF if this merger goes through.

I think this is very likely.

Wonder how would they will manage transferring sky players across to pokerstars, where someone has the same username, or if the sky customer already has a pokerstars account?
I know currently on partypoker you can play on a coral ID or party poker ID, depending on what client you launch.

Yes, it was basically stated as such, part of the justification of the deal.

However, it is a long time away. Consider, PS acquired Skybet what... 2 years ago? completed 18 months ago? Something like that. Sky Poker moving over to PS has been on the cards from the very start... yet it is still in the works (slated Q1 2020... but that clock is running down fast).

Ultimately it's a pretty low priority item for consolidation when you're looking at merging giant sports books with overlapping acquisition pipelines, US partnership deals, etc.... smallfry online poker in Europe isn't going to be must-do year 1 action item.

They made it work with Full Tilt, which had an order-of-magnitude (or two) number of players more than Sky Poker, so they have a process for this already in place.

All your base are belong to us

UK merger authority has approved this: https://assets.publishing.service.go...31_---_web.pdf

They defined five markets:

Interesting that they consider this a market when every UK sportsbook tries to shut down anyone active in this market with zero action from the CMA.

Flutter H1 2020

Some very interesting analysis from Poker Industry PRO editor Nick Jones (hood on 2+2) on Twitter this morning.

More rewards/generosity coming to PokerStars players soon?

Apologies for the wall of Tweets this morning.

VIDEO: http://staticcontents.investis.com/m...ation-2020.mp4 [PokerStars -- 9:18-10:33 ° 33:32-35:36]

Both Nick and Alun are far more practiced and knowledgeable about covering the corporate/executive end than I am, so it's most informative to just paste their analysis.

Your best option is to move to a modern country.

what does this mean for a (non-american) stars reg?

Pretty much nothing, but possibly some better rewards for grinders in the future.

Sounds very positive to me. The poker industry is crying out for more investment and for me to get more than 1% rb

I'm unsure if anyone knows with any precision at this point. For all we know, it could just turn out that regs get 2000 StarsCoins instead of 1000 the next time they open a Chest. Or perhaps a bump-up in customer service avg. response time from 8 weeks to six?

It's hard to tell at this point, but I agree with _jimbo_ in that Flutter's communication along with Nick Jones' analysis is "positive," and that "the poker industry is crying out for more investment." It's interesting that Flutter is taking a "major shift in rhetoric" position (as Nick would put it) -- moving up to an industry standard Flutter perceives as being set by its competitors -- as opposed to insisting competitors move down to meet Flutter's/TSG's/PokerStars' own previous "poker investment" percentages.



So that makes MGM/GVC/partypoker + Flutter/TSG/PokerStars who have committed to investing more in the whole "iGaming" space (which in U.S. statewide legislative terms includes online poker and online casino) as well as the online sports betting sector.

It sounds good imo. But again, no way to know anything precise until the statements provided by Flutter earlier today are put into actionable policy.

As everyone is aware, the regulated U.S. statewide online poker market is extremely small at this time... 4 out of 50 states have launched, and the PokerStars + partypoker products are 100% ring-fenced.

So the impact would likely be seen more profoundly within the UK and other markets for now?

Maybe Patrick Leonard or another poker player who keeps up with communicating/organizing this type of info/commentary related to player rewards/courtesies would know more. Either way this could be somewhat significant news... exactly how Nick Jones is portraying that it is as far as the "major rhetoric shift" goes. Will be interesting to see player and site reports in upcoming months and into 2021.

-David