Players To Continue To Have Access to Funds

Published on October 20th, 2015 1:18 am EST

Amaya, Inc., which owns both the Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker online poker rooms, announced earlier today that they are limiting StarsDraft in "most" U.S. states following a "review of recent developments in a number of jurisdictions".

Amaya, Inc. entered the rapidly growing world of daily fantasy sports earlier this year when they purchased Victiv and re-branded the site as "StarsDraft". The move was completed just before the start of the NFL season, which is, by far, the most popular sport for daily fantasy players.

Shortly after the transaction was completed, things started to go awry in the DFS industry. A DraftKings employee inadvertently released player ownership data before the start of Week 3 of the NFL season, and it was later revealed that this employee had won a great deal of money on competing DFS site, Fanduel.com. This use of "insider data" had reportedly resulted in employees of daily fantasy sites winning millions of dollars on the sites of their direct competitors.

The FBI and Department of Justice are both reportedly conducting preliminary investigations of the daily fantasy sports industry.

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Earlier in the year, the Nevada Gaming Control Board revealed that DFS operators are required to obtain gaming licenses, as the NGCB believes that entering a team into a DFS event is equivalent to making a wager. The major players in the industry, including FanDuel and DraftKings, almost immediately announced that they would be pulling out of the state.

In the days following the ruling, other states revealed that they would be visiting the topic of daily fantasy sports.

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With Amaya, Inc. recently being granted access to the New Jersey online gaming market after expending so much time and effort, the last thing that they want to do is jeopardize their license application. After all, compared to their overall operation, the proceeds from daily fantasy sports is likely nothing more than a rounding error for Amaya at this point, which is why it was probably an easy decision for them to limit StarsDraft in a number of US states until regulation takes place.

Source: Amaya Limits Operation of Daily Fantasy Sports Brand StarsDraft Pending Further State Regulation

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Filed Under: Online Poker Rooms