Key Takeaways
- The first hints that PokerStars was planning to take on Zynga Poker with its own play money app emerged five years ago.
- By 2014, PokerStars was showing its awareness in maintaining a free-play poker “ecology.”
- Despite the investment in social gaming, it is not broken out in Amaya’s online gaming revenues, nor did it get a mention during its 2016 full year financial presentation.
2013: PokerStars PLAY Emerges
While PokerStars has always offered free play money games on a “dot-net” basis, traditionally it has been seen as a free “demo” to playing real money poker. Like the rest of the industry, these play chips games looked and felt the same as the real money equivalent, the games on offer were identical, and players could reload their play money accounts frequently.
