- On September 10, PokerStars contacted Serbian players and informed them that the service was no longer available.
- The Eastern European country, population 7 million, has had a regulated online gambling market since 2011.
- The site has recently launched satellites and online tournaments for the Japan Open Poker Tour.
PokerStars has withdrawn its service from Serbia, according to multiple reports from customers in the region, PRO understands.
It makes it the fourth market withdrawal in the last two weeks, after the exits from China, Taiwan and Macau on September 1.
In late August, new PokerStars owners Flutter Entertainment told investors to expect market withdrawals, with an ongoing “assessment of the legal, regulatory and tax risk” having already identified “a small number of jurisdictions” that it was leaving.
A PokerStars spokesperson recently clarified to PRO that it had “exited several small markets” since the Flutter acquisition, adding “we’ve exited markets every year, we are always reviewing our regulatory position.”
The operator is known to have left Cyprus earlier in the year, as well as various French overseas territories. It also re-entered Slovenia and Slovakia a few months ago.
However, not all grey markets are apparently at immediate risk. The site has recently launched satellites and online tournaments for the Japan Open Poker Tour, a long-standing tour of free-to-play live events in the country, sponsored by PokerStars.JP, which offers freeroll satellites.
