Amaya Gaming Buys Ongame Poker Network
Amaya Gaming, the Montreal based gambling group, has confirmed the purchase of the Ongame Poker Network from industry giant bwin.party digital entertainment.
Amaya will pay bwin.party an initial sum of €15 million, which may be topped with up to €10 million extra, depending on the pace of online gambling regulation in the United States.
Ongame Poker Network was first purchased by Bwin from its Swedish parent group in 2005 for the huge sum of €473 million.
However, once Bwin merged with Party Gaming, which came with its own established Party Poker online poker site, the Ongame Network become surplus to the group and a buyer was sought.
Over the past months, deals have almost been finalized with potential buyers, but they have never reached the final point.
ShuffleMaster, the Vegas based group was almost due to pay €19.5 million, plus a €10 million option earlier this year, but backed off at the last moment as the pace of regulation in the US was not as fast as expected.
Ongame Network Good Buy for Amaya
Amaya Gaming believes that the purchase of the Ongame Network fits in with the group's current plans to expand significantly in the industry.
The network offers its services to poker rooms such as Betfair, Betsson and Coral, and offers regulated poker in Italy and France.
"The acquisition of Ongame bolsters Amaya Gaming's product portfolio, transforming Amaya into a leading provider of gaming platforms," noted the group's Chief Executive Officer, David Baazov, with the news that Amaya is buying the Ongame Poker Network. "Amaya looks forward to unleashing Ongame's technology to its full potential through the leveraging of our many B2B relationships and delivering new partners and players to the network."
"The Ongame platform is scalable, proven secure and is well suited for quick deployment in new regulated markets," he said. "We're excited about the wide range of opportunities this acquisition makes possible for us as we execute on our vision."
Ongame Sale Conforms to Bwin Strategy
The co-CEO's of bwin.party, Norbert Teufelberger and Jim Ryan also reacted to the sale of the Ongame Poker Network to Amaya Gaming.
"The sale of Ongame conforms to our strategy, especially as we move closer to launching our single, proprietary technology platform in the next few months," the pair noted in a statement. "We believe Ongame will fit well into Amaya Gaming and has an excellent future ahead."
The deal is expected to be finalized by the fourth quarter of 2012, according to a press statement.
