Amaya acquires daily fantasy sports operator Victiv, rebrands as StarsDraft

Canada’s Amaya Gaming has acquired daily fantasy sports (DFS) operator Victiv.

The Austin, Texas-based Victiv, which launched one year ago, has been among the operators vying for the title of third-largest DFS site behind DraftKings and FanDuel. The operation will be rebranded as StarsDraft – a Russian site launched under this brand in 2013 – and reborn at the StarsDraft.com domain in select US markets, with a full launch later through Amaya’s PokerStars’ platform.

The team currently managing Victiv will continue to hold the fort, including CEO Matthew Primeaux, who said the plan was to “capitalize on what we believe is strong crossover between online poker players” and DFS. Primeaux formerly served as an exec with online poker affiliate PokerStrategy.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Amaya CEO David Baazov said the cost was “immaterial.” The rebrand will occur before the NFL season kicks off and Baazov said the launch would allows Stars to “re-engage” with its US customer database, which hasn’t been updated since Stars left the US market following the April 15, 2011 ‘Black Friday’ indictments. This marks the first entry of a pure real-money online gambling firm into the US DFS market, which could influence how legislators and regulators view the sector. Watch this space…