PokerStars Sister Sites
PokerStars sister sites include Sky Poker, Sky Vegas, Sky Bet, Sky Casino, Tombola, Tombola Arcade, Paddy Power and Betfair. PokerStars (pokerstars.uk) is operated by Flutter Entertainment plc.
Sites like PokerStars
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PokerStars Sister Sites 2024
Sky Poker
PokerStars is a Flutter Entertainment plc company, so there’s no shortage of PokerStars sister sites. This super-network contains some of the biggest casino and iGaming brands in the industry, but the best place to start is with another poker site. That poker site is Sky Poker. It comes off as second best if it’s directly compared to PokerStars, but then every other poker site available to UK players comes off as second best if directly compared to PokerStars. Sky Poker can’t replicate the celebrity VIP feel of playing at PokerStars, but if you’re a poker fan, it’s still a site that’s more than worthy of your consideration.
Sky Poker promises that new players can be signed up and play at their first tables within minutes of arriving at the site, and that tables are set up based on ability. If you’re a poker rookie, you can sign up for the Sky Poker Academy and hone your skills in beginner rooms before moving on to meet the poker sharks at the big-money tables. With weekly bonuses, a lively forum and a string of real-world live poker meets held throughout the year, Sky Poker is a site that’s more steak than sizzle.
Sky Bingo
Being a Flutter Entertainment plc means that PokerStars doesn’t just have Sky Poker for company – it means that all of the Sky Betting and Gaming casinos are PokerStars sister sites. That includes Sky Bingo, which would come across as a big deal of a bingo site if Sky didn’t seem to be ashamed of it. From the moment you arrive on the Sky Bingo homepage, the site tries to convince you to start playing online slots in the Sky Bingo Arcade section instead of paying attention to its bingo rooms. You can’t even immediately see the bingo rooms on the Sky Bingo homepage, you have to scroll down to find them. It’s a strange choice for a site that’s supposed to specialise in the game of lucky numbers, and it comes off as deeply jarring.
When you eventually find the bingo rooms at Sky Bingo – a task that’s far harder than it should be because of the reasons listed above – you’ll find that they’re very busy. It’s rare to see a big-name Sky Bingo room with fewer than one hundred people in it, even during office hours or at night. There are fewer people in the novelty or speciality rooms like “Sky Speed” and “Mystical Bingo,” you should still get twenty or more playing companions even in those rooms. Ticket prices start at a single penny and increase from there, with room-based jackpots roughly proportional to the cost of the ticket. Some of the rooms are connected to far larger progressive jackpots, so keep an eye out for them if that’s what motivates you.
Sky Casino
There are five Sky-branded PokerStars sister sites. Sky Casino feels like the most pointless of them. All of the others have a clearly defined purpose, but Sky Casino fails to distinguish itself from Sky Vegas, which is an older and more popular casino site. It can’t claim to offer any unique online slots because, as we’ve already said, even Sky Bingo has online slots. Sky Casino claims to specialise in the bespoke, luxury casino experience by focusing on table games or games presented by live dealers, but that doesn’t make it unique among the PokerStars sister sites either. Sky Vegas already does all of those things and has been doing them for years.
If you’re new to Sky Casino, you can get up to £60 as a bonus by signing up and then spending £10 within thirty days. The bonus comes with an x40 wagering requirement, which is a little over the UK average but isn’t terrible. If you’re a highly competitive player, you can prove your might (or, more likely, your luck) by competing against your fellow players to reach the top of the Sky Casino Slots Leaderboard and win up to £500 in bonus cash. That’s a nice perk, but there’s still not enough about Sky Casino to make it stand out.
Sky Vegas
Sky Vegas was the second casino site ever to carry the Sky name, and in the eyes of many players, it’s still the best. It certainly has the most generous welcome promotion of all the PokerStars sister sites, offering fifty free spins to all new players without even requiring a deposit. As a cherry on top of the cake, the free spins come without any wagering requirements. If you win anything from them, you can withdraw your winnings from Sky Vegas whether you’ve made a deposit with the casino yet or not. Things get better when you do eventually make a deposit, though, as you can claim two hundred free spins in return for a £10 deposit. These additional bonus spins will also come free of any wagering requirements.
It was 2003 when Sky Vegas welcomed its first customer, which means it will soon be celebrating twenty years of operations. There was a Sky Vegas television channel on the Sky TV network once, but that’s since been rebranded for Sky Bet. The current version of Sky Vegas focuses on new slots with modern features but gives just as much space to live dealer games, including a few (like “Spin A Win”) that are exclusive to Sky Vegas and won’t be found at any of the other Sky-branded sites, let alone the other PokerStars sister sites.
Sky Bet
Sky Bet is arguably the most famous of the PokerStars sister sites. That might be a controversial statement to some because of the high profiles of some of the other brands, but Sky Bet has the advantage of being advertised relentlessly on television and social media. You’ll hear the Sky Bet name every time an English Football League fixture is aired on television. You’ll see the Sky Bet logo each time you tune into any sports coverage on Sky. You’ll even see the logo on YouTube if you ever tune in to any of the brand’s popular social media series, like “The Overlap” with Gary Neville. Sky Bet gets the kind of publicity that money simply can’t buy, and that’s why it will always be a success.
In the beginning, Sky Bet was just another sports betting brand. It came into existence in 2002 when BSkyB bought an established internet betting company and rebranded it with the Sky name. As the years went by, Sky Bet started experimenting with offering odds on other matters. You can now bet on everything from the identity of the next Prime Minister to the identity of the next winner of “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” with Sky Bet. In fact, if you can’t find the bet you’re looking for, you can Tweet them about it, and they’ll try to build it for you.
Tombola Arcade
Don’t come to Tombola Arcade expecting to see the same slots and games you’ll find at the other casino-focused PokerStars sister sites. In fact, don’t come to Tombola Arcade expecting to see any games you’ve seen anywhere else. As a third, “don’t,” don’t come to Tombola Arcade if you want a choice of hundreds or even dozens of different casino games. These things simply aren’t what Tombola Arcade are about. After Tombola itself became such a success, the company behind it (Tombola International plc, which is now part of Flutter Entertainment plc) asked itself a question. The question was, “what would arcade games look like if Tombola made them?” Tombola Arcade is the answer, but we feel it would be a more accurate answer if they’d specifically asked themselves about slots rather than arcade games. Most of the games here are, after all, slots.
The welcome bonus at Tombola Arcade is a strange one. Anyone who joins and deposits £25 gets to play with £75 thanks to a £50 bonus credit, but they can never withdraw their bonus. Instead, they may only withdraw funds that are won by staking the bonus. That technically means there aren’t any wagering requirements – it’s just an unusual way of phrasing and executing the idea. That being said, Tombola Arcade is a strange way of executing a casino website. It’s one-of-a-kind, and you’ll either love it or hate it.
Tombola
Earlier on, we noted that Sky Bingo seems almost embarrassed about being a bingo site. If you’d rather play at a site that’s all about bingo and proud of it, you won’t find a better one among the PokerStars sister sites than Tombola. This is the website that claims to be the UK’s biggest when it comes to bingo. We have no way of verifying that claim, but we suspect that it’s easily in the top one per cent of bingo sites in the country. Tombola comes with the same welcome promotion as Tombola Arcade, allowing every new player who deposits at least £25 to play with £75. The terms and conditions of the bonus offer are also the same, so you get even-handed treatment with promotions no matter which of the Tombola sites you play at.
Just as all the slots and arcade games at Tombolas Arcade are unique to the site, so are the bingo rooms at Tombola Bingo. You won’t find Deal or No Deal Bingo, Friends Bingo or Cash Cubes Bingo here. Instead, you’ll find a collection of bingo rooms and bingo-themed games hand-made for the site by the same people who designed and built the whole Tombola website. “Reel Bingo,” a combination of online slots and bingo, is as close as Tombola gets to offering a Slingo game without infringing on copyrights.
Paddy Power
Paddy Power might not be the UK’s biggest sports betting brand, but it’s certainly the loudest in the country. This Irish-based, green-coloured company is a big believer in the idea that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. If there’s a publicity stunt there for the taking, Paddy Power will usually take it regardless of whether or not other people find it to be in bad taste. That’s how they made headlines – and were told off by various regulators – for offering odds on the assassination of Donald Trump when he was the President of the United States of America. There are bigger PokerStars sister sites than this, but none of them even come close to Paddy Power when it comes to controversy and creating headlines.
The purpose of all the noise Paddy Power makes is to draw people to the site to bet on sports. That’s how Paddy power made its name, and it’s still how it does the bulk of its business. However, there’s more to Paddy Power than that. Thanks to the creation of Paddy Power Vegas, Paddy Power Games and Paddy Power Bingo, the company now covers virtually every aspect of modern iGaming – and yes, that includes virtual sports.
Betfair
Paddy Power and Betfair are inextricably linked. In fact, Paddy Power and Betfair wouldn’t be PokerStars sister sites if Paddy Power and Betfair hadn’t met first. Although the two brands are like chalk and cheese, they merged and created PPB Games Limited a few years ago. PPB Games Limited eventually became the basis of Flutter Entertainment plc, with Paddy Power and Betfair at the core of that entity. We’ve already discussed the larger-than-life personality of the Paddy Power brand. Betfair is its far more serious brother. It doesn’t tell jokes, but it can offer you far more depth.
The big appeal of Betfair, as far as most sports bettors are concerned, is the power of the Betfair exchange. If you’ve ever indulged in lay betting, you’ll probably know all about it already. The Betfair Exchange can generally offer you the equal and opposite of anything you might find elsewhere and is the largest service of its kind in the UK. Betfair occasionally shows flashes of personality – it wouldn’t have a Betfair Casino or Betfair Bingo section if it didn’t, but for the main part, it’s totally serious about sports betting and has developed a reputation for being “the professional’s choice.”
PokerStars Review
New Player Welcome Offers
All new players at PokerStars, who deposit £10 or more, are eligible for the £50 Play N Go bonus. The Play N Go tickets will be accredited to new accounts over the course of six days, but be quick; they expire after 24 hours. All new players will be prohibited from withdrawing money during the new player welcome offer promotional period.
If it is the online slot games that have caught your eye at PokerStars, you can opt for the casino welcome package instead. New players will get 100 free spins just for registering; those 100 free spins come free from wagering restrictions, the motto is, if you win it, you keep it! Once you have exhausted your 100 free spins, there are 150 more up for grabs with all first deposits of £10 or more. The promotional offer is subject to account verification, and free spins expire within 7 days. Even though PokerStars does offer a sportsbook, at the time of writing, there was no promotional welcome offer for sports bettors.
PokerStars is owned by Flutter Entertainment PLC
Flutter Entertainment, formerly known as Paddy Power Betfair PLC, is a public limited company which was founded in Dublin, Ireland in 2016. It has gone through a fair number of traditions and acquisitions since its inception, but the company still landed a place on the London Stock Exchange and the FTSE 100 Index.
Other big brand names which sit alongside PokerStars in Flutter Entertainment PLC’s portfolio include Betfair, Fox Bet, Full Tilt Poker, Paddy Power, Sky Bet and the TVG Network. Most recently, Flutter Entertainment PLC welcomed Tombola into the sister site family in January 2022. Currently, the spectator sports, iGaming and gambling company is focusing on four main operations, UK retail, UK online gambling, Australian betting – through the ownership of Sportsbet – and American betting – through the ownership of Fox Sports and Fan Duel.
PokerStars Monthly Promotions
Poker players at PokerStars may be left feeling spoilt for choice with the range of regularly occurring promotional offers. There are chances to win platinum passes to major events on the poker site, rewards for getting to the top of certain leader boards, free poker tickets, prize draws, and plenty more. The poker promotion page also highlights some of the best poker content available, including the Early Bird Zoom games, Spin & Go Flash games, 6+ Hold Em Games, and the innovative PokerStars VR rooms.
The PokerStars Rewards program is another way to scoop up awards on the platform; up to 100 reward points can be accrued for every £10 deposited and played on the platform. Additionally, loyal players can unlock monthly poker challenges, which are worth up to 40% in additional rewards, and there are phenomenal cashback rates of up to 65%!
For casino players, casino races run every week from Thursday to Sunday, there are 1,000 paid positions on the leader boards, and the top prize comes in at £10,000. There is also the pit stop cash drop promotion, where qualifying players can bank randomly allocated jackpot prizes.
PokerStars: Pros and Cons
Pros:
• Million-pound prizes from poker tournaments.
• 2,200 online slot games to choose from.
Cons:
• Limited customer service
• The rake has recently increased.
Featured Slots and Casino Games
Of all the online poker sites, PokerStars has the highest traffic globally, along with its own innovations on poker, such as with the VR poker rooms, there is a range of more classic Play N Go and tournament games; covering all of the main variants, such as Omaha, Texas Hold Em, 5 Card Draw, HORSE and Triple Draw. There are handfuls of games running night and day at every reasonable deposit limit, but for those only gunning for the biggest wins, there is a £1 million tournament every Sunday.
Over in the casino, PokerStars is home to a range of exclusive online slot games, which you won’t find at any other casino, including Mega Multiplier Medusa Gems, Big Blue Bounty 20,000x and Royal Cashgot. The range of Jackpot slot games also gives players plenty to go at, but some of the best ways to rake in massive prizes are via the Casino Races, which play daily and weekly. The range of live table games, video table games, roulette games and instant win games leaves little to be desired too; if only we could say the same for the integrated sportsbook. Although if you are heading to a poker site for sports betting, you may as well head to a steak restaurant for seafood.
Deposit and Withdrawal Methods
There are currently over 15 different ways for UK players to make a deposit at PokerStars. Some of the most popular include Apple Pay, Visa Debit, PayPal, Skrill and Neteller, and there are almost as many ways to withdraw. Both the minimum deposit and withdrawal amount is £10. The majority of withdrawal methods take 3 – 10 days to complete.
PokerStars Customer Support and License
The only way to speak to a member of the customer support team at PokerStars is via the live chat service. They have even removed their email address from the ‘Contact Us’ page, which isn’t impressive by any stretch of the imagination.
PokerStars is fully licenced by the UK Gambling Commission under licence, 39108.
PokerStars – The Verdict
When looking at PokerStars as a whole, it is clear to see that the pros and cons of membership are almost in an intricate balance. Promotion and traffic-wise, the poker platform is unbeatable, but there are also many other things that let down the sister site, such as the limited customer service, the incredibly long withdrawal processing times, which could take up to 10 days, and the sportsbook which feels like an unnecessary add on feature that they didn’t put all too much effort into. There are also rumours of unbeatable bots at most of the tables, not just the cash games, but all in all, PokerStars isn’t a site we’d advise to steer well clear of, just be aware of some of its pitfalls!
