Bwin.party Flogs Ongame To Amaya

Bwin joined forces last year with Party Poker to form Bwin.party and there was real excitement tha the partnership might be the start of something special, for some anyway. To be honest, it comes as no surprise that the share price has been struggling, that the company continually bemoans the fact that other online poker sites are stealing their business. In fact they have been fairly vocal about the fact that they have not making as much money as they would have liked. It is pretty obvious that when these two online gambling giants joined forced that there would be duplication of technology and divisions, a situation which could become top-heavy over time.

In the news we have seen that the company is starting to divest itself of excess assets, and it seems that one of the first to go is the Ongame Poker Network (it's Business to Business Online Poker network), which belongs to Bwin. It actually makes so much better business sense to only run one poker online product. Ongame is being sold to the Canadian – Amaya Gaming – Jim Ryan Co-CEO of bwin.party said, this sale falls fully in-line with their future strategy".

The bwin-party merged brand is moving closer towards launching proprietary poker technology, and this should take place in the next few months. It will be interesting to see what they have planned for this move.

Ongame is apparently a good fit for Amaya Gaming, and CEO David Baazov is pretty happy with the deal. They paid an initial €15 million consideration, with an additional amount of up to €10 million pending. Only becoming payable should a regulated framework (at Federal level we think this means) for online gambling be adopted into law in the USA within five years of the date of sale.

Ongame boosts this company’s product portfolio, and will assist in the leveraging of their B2B relationships. It would also facilitate Amaya’s position to participate in the US market should online poker become regulated, legislated and allowed for all players to enjoy.