4. The Stars Group (2017)

This was the year that CEO Rafi Ashkenazi began stamping his own image on the PokerStars-parent company, while also condemning David Baazov to the history books. The firm rebranded from Amaya to The Stars Group, relocated its corporate headquarters to Toronto and began building up a formidable team of top-class egaming executives, including Crown’s Christopher Coyne, William Hill’s Robin Chhabra, Playtech’s Dr Jerry Bowskill and Mr Green’s Bo Wanghammar.

In a seemingly tacit acceptance of the firm’s evolution, Baazov began selling off huge chunks of his stake in the company, with the relationship between the two becoming ever fainter. And while the former CEO faces a growing litany of legal issues, Stars seems to be prospering. H1 revenues climbed 8.4% to $622.6m, with the company continuing its diversification away from poker. Combined real-money online casino and sportsbook revenues in Q2 were $89.0m, up around 54%cc for the quarter, as the PokerStars Casino blossomed into one of the world’s largest casinos in terms of active users.

And while poker continues to be an issue, with revenues down 5.6% cc in Q2, the company is confident it has found the answer in the form of shared liquidity in Europe and its unique cross-vertical loyalty programme, Stars Rewards. “It’s been very positive,” Ashkenazi said of the programme after H1. “It’s a little bit soon to say publicly, but so far we have seen exactly what we wanted to see, which is more engagement and more poker play.”

Elsewhere, M&A will remain high on the agenda for the Canadian giant, with sportsbook still a priority after the now-infamous run at William Hill. Former Hills man Chhabra joined the operator in H2 to guide acquisition opportunities, and Ashkenazi recently told reporters: “We now feel more comfortable to start allocating more budget towards supporting casino and sportsbook acquisitions. When it comes to casino, and I’ll also include sports betting, I believe we are just at the beginning of the journey.”