Player Pool for PokerStars on FanDuel is Growing Quickly

The regulated US online poker market isn’t getting much bigger, but PokerStars Exclusively on FanDuel appears to be carving out a larger piece of it.

New estimates published by Poker Industry PRO and reported by Pokerfuse show PokerStars on FanDuel generated around $2.6 million in revenue across Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in August, representing a 14% year-over-year increase.

On its own, double-digit growth would be encouraging. Put alongside what is happening across the rest of the US market, the numbers don’t paint the prettiest picture for online poker in the US.

Total regulated US online poker revenue was estimated at $8.8 million in August, roughly unchanged across the previous four months and down around 2% compared to last year. WSOP Online, still the country’s largest network by estimated revenue, was down 10% year-over-year, while BetMGM Poker declined 16%.

In other words, PokerStars isn’t riding a rising tide. It appears to be winning players in a market that has largely stopped growing.

PokerStars on FanDuel Finds Growth

In April, PokerStars moved its US players from its old in-house software onto the iPoker platform as part of its new FanDuel-branded operation. Pennsylvania joined Michigan and New Jersey to create one shared three-state player pool and five months later, there are signs the changes are working.

PokerStars on FanDuel generated an estimated $12.9 million from April through August, compared with $11.8 million over the equivalent five-month period in 2025. That’s growth of 9.4%.

New Jersey has been particularly strong as PokerStars is now estimated to be the largest individual poker site in the state and has grown around 30% year-over-year. Although BetMGM’s combined network, which includes Borgata and PartyPoker, remains larger. Michigan is estimated to be growing at a similar rate.

PokerStars PA is the odd one out and is still estimated to be down year-over-year despite having access to the larger interstate player pool. But on the whole, the numbers are encouraging in the battle for supremacy.

More Than Just Shared Liquidity?

In addition to the shared liquidity, PokerStars has also spent the months since the FanDuel launch making its platform more attractive.

In July, PokerStars doubled the tournament’s starting stack for Nightly Stars from 5,000 to 10,000 chips and pushed back the end of late registration. Guarantees were also increased to $25,000 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with $22,500 guaranteed on the other nights.

Those changes gave players more chips, more time to enter or re-enter and bigger prize pools to chase.

PokerStars followed that by introducing a weekly Nightly Stars leaderboard, putting another $2,500 in tournament tickets into the ecosystem each week.

Neither promotion alone explains a 14% increase in revenue, but together they point towards a wider strategy of giving players more reasons to log in regularly.

The operator has also leaned into its new FanDuel identity elsewhere. The traditional Spin & Go format was recently given an NFL-season makeover as Spin & Field Goal, with the $5 version offering a shot at a $1 million jackpot.

Are PokerStars’ Gains Coming From Its Rivals?

That’s perhaps the most important question raised by the latest numbers.

The overall regulated market isn’t showing meaningful growth. PokerStars is up 14%, while WSOP Online and BetMGM are down by double digits.

That doesn’t prove every dollar gained by PokerStars came directly from one of those two competitors. Revenue estimates also don’t tell us how individual players are splitting their volume between sites.

But the numbers strongly suggest PokerStars on FanDuel is increasing its share of the existing US online poker market rather than simply benefiting from an expanding player base.

Pokerfuse described the trend as PokerStars “poaching” players from its competition, with PokerStars currently the only one of the three largest US networks showing year-over-year growth.

The next challenge is whether those changes can bring genuinely new players into regulated online poker rather than simply convincing existing players to move their action.

Calum has been a part of the PokerNews team since September 2021 after working in the UK energy sector. He played his first hand of poker in 2017 and immediately fell in love with the game.

Calum has written for various poker outlets but found his home at PokerNews, where he has contributed to various articles and live updates, providing insights and reporting on major poker events, including the World Series of Poker (WSOP).