Is Pokerstars a Publicly Traded Company?
Q: Who Owns Pokerstars?
A: Last Updated: 04/10/2020 3:58 pm EST
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Flutter Entertainment (owner of PaddyPower Betfair) agreed to buy The Stars Group (owner of Pokerstars), though the proposed merger needs to clear anti-trust regulators.
The deal was announced in October of 2019.
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Older Update: Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker are now owned by Amaya Gaming Group Inc. followed a $4.9 billion deal that was announced in the late spring of 2014
Edit: Amaya changed their name and is now known as The Stars Group.
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First off, Pokerstars.com is officially owned by Rational Entertainment Enterprises Limited, which is based out of the Isle of Man.
Rational Entertainment Enterprises Limited is not a publicly traded company.
Because Pokerstars is not a publicly traded company, details about the firm's ownership structure are not known to the public, as private companies aren't required to disclose this information to the public.
What we do know is that Pokerstars was planning on going public in 2006, even going as far as to hire NM Rothschild to help them attain a public listing. These plans were scuttled when the UIGEA was passed later in the year. According to various articles from reputable sources that reported on the potential Pokerstars IPO, Isai Scheinberg and his family own 75% of the company. The remaining 25% of the company, according to these sources, is owned by employees of Pokerstars.
Some sources maintain that a couple of Scheinberg's close associates also own shares in the company.
It's generally accepted that Isai Scheinberg and his family own the vast majority of the shares in Rational Entertainment Enterprises Limited. Scheinberg is a former programmer at IBM who resides in Canada.
Note: The fact that Pokerstars didn't go through with their IPO ended up being a blessing in disguise for the company. Party Poker, which had gone public a short time earlier, was forced to pull out of the US market after the UIGEA was passed into law, due to the fact that they were a publicly traded company. Pokerstars, which was still private, had the luxury of continuing to serve the US market, which has resulted in the company growing enormously over the past few years.
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