Amaya Gaming Casinos & Pokies

Amaya Gaming Background

Amaya Gaming was founded in Canada in 2004 by David Baazov, the company’s former CEO. Amaya, at first, focused on developing online pokie sites and game content for NZ online casinos. They have since branched out into other online avenues, including free play and real money online poker, sports betting (sportsbook), and fantasy sports on both desktop and mobile.

In 2014, Amaya purchased the Rational group which meant that the company incorporated a cornucopia of well-established poker brands into its fold. These brands include PokerStars, Full Tilt, BetStars, StarsDraft and the PokerStars Festival live poker tour brands. These in themselves include the European Poker Tour, PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, Latin American Poker Tour and the Asia Pacific Poker Tour.

Cumulatively, these brands form the world’s largest poker community with more than 108 million registered users between them. Amaya Gaming, through all its third-party interests and subsidiaries (including the PokerStars network), is licensed in 17 jurisdictions around the world, more than any other online gaming brand in the world.

Amaya Gaming Casinos and Online Pokies

Amaya has designed and produced many online pokies including titles such as Jenga, Just Vegas, Golden Jaguar, and Zodiac Wilds. Amaya has also struck numerous agreements with brands to create exclusive pokies based on movies, comics and television programs. These include DC Comics pokies Wonder Woman Jackpots and Superman: Last Son of Krypton, as well as The Italian Job, Street Fighter II and Forrest Gump, all branded pokies exclusively licensed to Amaya Gaming.

The company also partnered with Aristocrat Gaming, known for their terrestrial pokie machines found on the Vegas gaming floor. Amaya brought many of these classic titles to the world of real money casino sites, with the first titles including Wild Panda and Pompeii.

Our Final Thoughts

Amaya has been embroiled in controversy previously, as the former CEO David Baazov was on trial for insider trading related to the takeover of Rational Group (the Parent Group of PokerStars). The aforementioned corporate rebranding come at a time when perhaps the company wanted to try and shake off some of this controversy.

Amaya Gaming is also contemplating expansion into the as yet untapped Indian market. The Chief Technology Officer suggested that it would only be a matter of time before Amaya became “as usual the market leader when it comes to poker.”

Amaya Gaming Casino FAQs

Dale Shelabarger Author

Dale is an author for InsideCasino and an expert in the iGaming sector, with his specialist areas in casinos, online pokies and bingo. dale has written hundreds of casino reviews and iGaming articles over the past 15 years.