Amaya Completes Rebranding to Stars Group Inc.
Amaya, Inc. is no more, having officially completed its corporate rebranding to become The Stars Group, Inc. The move, which was announced back in May, became official as of August 1st.
The parent company of PokerStars, Full Tilt and several other gaming brands also announced the completion of the move of its corporate headquarters from Montreal, Quebec to Toronto, Ontario.
Having completed its transition to become The Stars Group, Inc., the company also announced that it will be traded under a pair of new ticker symbols. Once traded as AYA in both Canada and the United States, The Stars Group’s common shares have begun trading under the ticker symbols “TSG” on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and “TSGI” on the Toronto Stock Exchange at market open today.
As part of the corporate rebranding, The Stars Group, Inc. has also moved its online home and will launch a new website — already up and running at http://www.thestarsgroup.com — which is now the home for all Stars Group corporate and financial news. A new logo was also introduced as part of the transition.
We opined even before the name change was announced back in May that the “Stars” handle was too valuable to jettison, and indeed, that turned out to be the case. The company’s name transition will effectively jettison the old Amaya name, which unfortunately had become too closely tied with less than ideal happenings both within and outside the poker world.
PokerStars’ once-shining reputation with veteran portions of the online-poker playing community had been tarnished following a steady series of corporate cutbacks targeting online grinders’ secondary player benefits. Such reductions fit better to Stars Group’s ongoing plans to cater more to casual, recreational players, but certainly angered a good chunk of its pre-existing player base.
Perhaps even larger in impact, however, were the alleged insider-trading improprieties of Amaya’s former president and CEO, David Baazov. The “Amaya” name was closely tied to Baazov, and following his forced departure, there was less reason to keep the name around. It’s perhaps telling that the now-rebranded Stars Group has never issued any form of corporate quote about the rebranding, opening up an avenue of conjecture that the company’s execs might have come to the conclusion that the sooner they washed their hands of anything “Amaya,” the better for the company’s fortunes.
It’s hard to argue with that reasoning, even if it is all just about a new coat of corporate paint. The formal announcement made by the Stars Group offers very little extra information, other than noting that the move from Montreal to Toronto was conducted under the auspices of Ontario’s Business Corporations Act.
As mentioned, The Stars Group, Inc. owns and operates a large number of online and live gambling brands, including the runaway global market leader in online poker, PokerStars. Along with Stars and Full Tilt, Stars Group also offers PokerStars Casino, BetStars, StarsDraft, and the PokerStars Championship, PokerStars Festival and PokerStars Megastack live poker tour brands. Those live brands include elements of Stars’ previous live-tour offerings, which are also undergoing restructuring and which included the European Poker Tour, PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, Latin American Poker Tour and the Asia Pacific Poker Tour.
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