Flutter Entertainment-owned online poker operator PokerStars is reportedly no longer accepting players from China, Macau, and Taiwan as its parent organization is looking to switch off black markets.
Online poker and other forms of online gambling are banned in all of the above three territories, but like many operators servicing customers from these, PokerStars has found ways to circumvent local regulations.
It has now apparently taken a new direction under its new ownership. PokerStars’ owner The Stars Group recently closed a multi-billion tie-up with Irish online gambling giant Flutter Entertainment. The combined group has retained the Flutter name.
On Monday, a user on online poker forum Two Plus Two posted a screenshot of an emailed message from Stars Support that said that PokerStars would be exiting China, Taiwan, and Macau as of September 1.
The message read further that PokerStars has made certain changes to its withdrawal policies in those jurisdictions to facilitate player withdrawals. The online poker operator said that it has lowered the minimum wire amount to $50 for China, Taiwan, and Macau.
In addition, PokerStars has enabled MuchBetter as a withdrawal option without a previous deposit for China and Macau, and Skrill and NETELLER for Taiwan.
News about PokerStars quitting China, Taiwan, and Macau emerge shortly after the operator exited Cyprus, which was also big market for the operator.
Flutter Switching Off Black Markets
PokerStars announced its departure from China, Taiwan, and Macau just days after Flutter said that it would switch off a “small number of TSG (The Stars Group) jurisdictions that Flutter had previously determined it would not operate in.”
The gambling operator also said that it planned to improve “the quality of TSG’s safer gambling/anti-money laundering procedures.” Flutter estimated that its efforts would cost around £65 million every year.
PokerStars’ exit from unregulated jurisdictions is certainly linked to Flutter’s big US expansion plans. The online poker brand itself is active in several US states where playing poker online for real money is legal, but several other Flutter-owned operations are also expanding quickly across the US, with FanDuel and FOX Bet being some of them.
PokerStars presence in unregulated markets could spell trouble for Flutter’s US growth ambitions as lawmakers and regulators in the States have always frowned upon operators targeting customers in territories where gambling is prohibited or heavily restricted.
It should also be noted that PokerStars itself was shamefully purged out of the US just under a decade ago in one of the darkest episodes in the history of online poker that the community refers to as Black Friday. The operator, then owned by Israeli-Canadian businessmen Isai and Mark Scheinberg, was banned from the US after local authorities found that it had kept servicing local players after the implementation of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.
In other words, any misstep in how PokerStars and other brands operating under the Flutter umbrella carry out their operations can now badly impact the major gambling operator’s US expansion ambitions.
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