French online poker operator Winamax announced last week that it has welcomed a pair of popular poker players to its Team Winamax. Italy’s Mustapha Kanit and Spain’s Adrian Mateos Diaz have become the latest stars of European poker to join the elite company of professionals who are promoting the brand as its ambassadors.

The announcement comes just as Winamax is preparing for the upcoming launch of a shared online poker liquidity network, which will see France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal merge their player pools in a bid to give a much-needed boost to their online poker markets.

The regulator of Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal signed a shared online poker liquidity agreement in July after a year of negotiations on the terms of the future launch of an online poker network. It was in early 2017 when Winamax, which is currently licensed in France only, first signaled its intention to expand into other regulated jurisdictions and to participate in the shared liquidity project. The operator posted on its LinkedIn page back in January an announcement that it was looking for Spanish-, Italian-, and Portuguese-speaking staff.

Italy is expected to launch a call for bids from operators interested to enter the country’s market anytime now. Spain has also recently announced that it would move to expand its market by opening another bidding round for brands that would like to obtain a Spanish iGaming license.

As for Portugal, it opened its market for regulated operations last year and has been granting licenses since then. At present, PokerStars is the only online poker operator to have obtained a license from Portuguese regulators, but it is believed that once the shared online poker liquidity network is launched, this would change and more poker brands will be admitted to the market.