Amaya Gaming Jumps Into Daily Fantasy Sports

Amaya 2While U.S. players impatiently wait for the New Jersey government to get off its ass and approve PokerStars’ internet gaming license, the world’s largest online poker room has made a move to get back into the U.S. gaming market. Amaya Gaming, PokerStars’ parent company, announced today that it has purchased Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) site Victiv.com for an undisclosed dollar amount.

The move was previewed in the spring when Amaya Gaming CEO David Baazov said on an earnings call that his company planned to get into the DFS industry before the National Football League (NFL) season started.

“We have also taken the strategic decision to enter the daily fantasy sports category and are pursuing parallel tracks of internal development and strategic acquisition,” Baazov said. “We expect to provide more details on this strategy in the second half of 2015 but see a clear crossover from poker and daily fantasy sports.”

Acquisition it is. Victiv is a young site – it has only been around for eleven months – but it has already developed a solid reputation. Based in Austin, Texas, Victiv is known for its slick, easy-to-use web-based interface and promotions geared towards players on a budget. And even though it accepts major credit cards and PayPal, it also accepts Bitcoin, something those who still play online poker in the U.S. may appreciate. Victiv is not nearly as big as, say, FanDuel or DraftKings, but the acquisition by Amaya Gaming could certainly help give it a boost.

Victiv will be renamed StarsDraft. For now, it is still Victiv.com, but the StarsDraft.com site is up with a place-holder front page that links to Victiv. PokerStars also plans to integrate its new DFS offering in its traditional poker client at some point.

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