PartyPoker owner bwin.party has completed the sale of the Ongame B2B poker network to Canadian gaming supplier Amaya Gaming for €15m.
Amaya, which operates the InterCasino B2C brand through its ownership of casino software supplier CryptoLogic, will also make additional payments of up to €10m over the next five years, dependent on the number of individual US states that regulate and the proportion of the US population that comes into play.
Amaya returned to the negotiating table with bwin.party in June after Nevada-licensed casino supplier Shuffle Master pulled out of a deal to buy the poker network for up to €29.5m, citing deteriorating conditions in the European online poker environment.
The sale of Ongame, deemed surplus to requirements following the merger of PartyGaming and bwin to form bwin.party last year, has been completed ahead of the group’s imminent move to a “single, proprietary technology platform”. The group is set to merge liquidity from its poker brands – moving bwin’s players off the Ongame software – on the PartyGaming platform in dot.com markets and in the ring-fenced French market by the end of 2012.
For Amaya, the deal moves the group closer to becoming a fully fledged egaming supplier in the vein of Playtech, Microgaming and GTECH G2, an evolution which began in May last year with the purchase of online casino supplier Chartwell, followed by CryptoLogic in February of this year.
Stockholm-headquartered Ongame runs an open dot.com poker network and regional networks in France, Italy and Spain, with 19 operators running 25 brands on the software platform, including Betfair, Betsson, Betsafe, and Paf.
It is currently the fifth largest site/network measured in terms of cash player traffic (Source: PokerScout) but this is expected to fall by well over half when all of bwin’s poker players are moved on to the Party Poker platform.
Article edited by Stephen Carter
