For 25 years, PokerStars has been somewhere poker players went. Download the software, create an account and find a table.
That relationship helped build one of online poker’s defining brands. Now, something fundamental is changing.
PokerStars is becoming a network.
Other gambling brands can bring their customers into PokerStars games, creating shared player pools without PokerStars needing to acquire every player itself. It sounds like an operational change, but it could eventually prove much bigger.
PokerStars Is Becoming More Than a Poker Room
The PokerStars Network, known as PSN, connects poker players entering through different Flutter-owned brands. Betfair became the first UK brand to join in August, with Paddy Power and Sky Poker expected to follow later in 2026.
The underlying principle is simple. A Betfair customer can play PokerStars poker without PokerStars needing to win that customer directly, and the same idea can eventually apply across several brands.
That represents an important change in how PokerStars traditionally operated. For most of its history, PokerStars was the destination, while the new model increasingly makes it the technology, games and liquidity sitting behind multiple destinations.
Why Does PokerStars Need a Network?
Online poker has a problem that sportsbooks and online casinos do not face in quite the same way. It needs other players.
A slot machine works with one customer, while a poker table becomes considerably less useful when nobody else is sitting there. Liquidity is therefore one of online poker’s most valuable assets.
PokerStars has acknowledged that increasingly fragmented regulation has made maintaining that liquidity harder. Different licensing systems have divided players between jurisdictions and forced operators to leave some markets entirely.
PokerStars Chief Commercial Officer Mike Woodbridge has also acknowledged the consequences for players, including thinner fields and smaller tournament prizes. The PokerStars Network is an attempt to push in the opposite direction.
Instead of maintaining separate poker populations across multiple Flutter brands, PSN can funnel more players towards connected games. More players can mean more running cash tables, larger tournament fields and potentially bigger guarantees.
Betfair Is Only the Beginning
The first stage is already visible in Britain. As PokerStars moved onto Betfair, Betfair stopped being simply another competing poker destination and became an entrance into the PokerStars ecosystem.
Existing UK PokerStars customers are also expected to eventually access PokerStars poker through Betfair. Crucially, UK players are not being separated from PokerStars’ existing global pool, with Betfair players instead being added to it.
Paddy Power and Sky Poker should expand that further when they join. That gives Flutter several established consumer brands capable of feeding players into the same poker ecosystem.
It also changes the question PokerStars needs to answer. Instead of asking how it persuades every poker player to become a PokerStars customer, it can ask how many customers across Flutter can become poker players.
FanDuel Shows Where the Strategy Could Go
Britain is not the only place where this strategy is appearing. PokerStars has already been integrated with FanDuel in North America, with eligible players in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan able to share liquidity while Ontario remains separate.
That network is already being used for substantial tournament series. The PokerStars Dynasty Series features 100 US tournaments and at least $3.5 million in guarantees.
That provides an early example of why liquidity matters. Individual regulated US poker markets have historically struggled with comparatively small player populations, while connecting eligible states gives an operator a larger audience for tournaments and cash games.
The UK situation is different because players remain connected to the international PokerStars pool. However, the underlying strategy is similar: consolidate poker players rather than fragment them.
PokerStars Is Protecting Its Biggest Assets
There is another important part of this change. PokerStars is not abandoning the things that made PokerStars valuable.
Its familiar poker product remains, alongside major tournament brands including the Sunday Million, SCOOP and WCOOP. That distinction matters because Flutter could theoretically have consolidated its poker operations around another platform.
Instead, PokerStars appears to be becoming the poker engine around which those operations are consolidated. The timing is particularly interesting.
The current WCOOP 2026 schedule contains 350 tournaments across 121 numbered events, with six Main Events guaranteeing a combined $6.5 million. PokerStars has also just celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Sunday Million.
These are enormously valuable poker properties. Turning PokerStars into a network potentially gives Flutter more ways to put players into them.
Could Other Poker Operators Eventually Join?
This is where the PokerStars Network becomes particularly interesting. For now, the strategy largely revolves around Flutter’s own brands.
It does not necessarily have to remain that way.
Industry analysis has raised the possibility that PSN could eventually accept third-party operators. That would make PokerStars resemble established B2B poker networks more closely, although PokerStars has not announced such an expansion.
The distinction is important because there is a significant difference between saying PokerStars can develop into an open network and saying that it will. Yet the infrastructure creates possibilities that previously did not exist.
PokerStars could theoretically partner with established local operators in markets where acquiring customers directly has become difficult or expensive. Those partners could provide distribution while PokerStars provides the poker product and liquidity.
That model is already familiar elsewhere in online poker. What would be remarkable is seeing PokerStars embrace it.
From Destination to Infrastructure
The change looks even bigger when viewed against PokerStars’ history. Isai and Mark Scheinberg founded PokerStars in 2001, and the company grew by persuading poker players to choose PokerStars over rival rooms.
That strategy worked spectacularly. PokerStars became synonymous with online poker during its strongest years, while its software, tournaments and enormous player pools created a powerful network effect.
Players went where the games were. Because players went there, even more games ran.
The PokerStars Network is effectively trying to strengthen that same advantage using a different route. Instead of relying entirely on players arriving through PokerStars itself, Flutter can bring customers from Betfair, FanDuel, Paddy Power and Sky Poker into the ecosystem.
PokerStars becomes less dependent on a single front door.
What Does the PokerStars Network Mean for Players?
Players ultimately care less about corporate structures than the games available when they log in. That makes PSN relatively easy to judge.
Are more cash tables running? Are tournament fields growing? Are guarantees increasing, and is there a wider selection of games at more times?
Those are the measurements that matter. PokerStars has recently demonstrated that enormous fields remain possible, with the Sunday Million anniversary event carrying a $5 million guarantee after weeks of qualification.
A successful network could make maintaining tournaments of that scale easier. It could also introduce poker to customers who previously used Flutter brands exclusively for other products.
That might be the most valuable part of the entire strategy. Online poker does not simply need existing players moved between rooms, it needs new and returning players entering the ecosystem.
Is This Really the Biggest Change in PokerStars History?
There is plenty of competition for that title. PokerStars survived Black Friday, acquired Full Tilt Poker and was sold to Amaya for $4.9 billion before later becoming part of Flutter Entertainment following Flutter’s merger with The Stars Group.
Each changed the company dramatically. The PokerStars Network is different because it could change what PokerStars actually is.
PokerStars can remain a famous consumer poker brand while simultaneously becoming the network powering poker elsewhere. The red spade does not disappear, the software does not disappear, and the Sunday Million and WCOOP do not disappear.
The route players take to reach them simply becomes less important.
That could prove particularly powerful in an online poker market divided by regulation, national borders and increasingly expensive customer acquisition. PokerStars spent its first 25 years building one of poker’s biggest destinations.
Its next chapter may be about building the roads that lead there.
