Bwin.party digital entertainment has finally got shot of the Ongame Poker Network after confirming the sale of the “surplus asset” to Canadian-based Amaya Gaming Group. The news comes exactly a month after Amaya had themselves confirmed the deal and it remains the reported amount of €15 million with a further €10 million due “if there is regulated online gaming in the United States within five years of completion”. Amaya are obviously most interested about this part of the deal and in addition to that it gives them a casino-poker one-two punch that many other firms will be envious of. All the while Amaya were chuckling to themselves as they got Ongame for a knockdown price that will reach a maximum of just €25m. Job well done if you ask us.
BetClic Everest’s two top poker brands have navigated their way over to Playtech’s iPoker Network and in the process abandoned their own standalone network. The Everest Poker and Betclic Poker brands will now reside on the network and it’s so far unclear as to which tier they’ll each be on. It’s hoped the move will help to kickstart the ailing French poker market that is still toiling.
The latest set of results published by regulator ARJEL showed that active players and revenue in France’s poker industry continued to decline. Gross gaming revenue dropped by 5 percent to €70million with a 10 percent decrease in active dot.fr players to 700,000 contributing to a 12 percent decline in dot.fr cash games. Tournament entries were up 20 percent to €318million and the amount of players using mobile devices to play were twice as high as last year at 152,700. The country’s sports betting market benefited from the London 2012 Olympics as amounts staked on that vertical increased by 14 percent. The fact sports betting GGR dropped 2 percent to €27m detracted from this and horse race betting was another to suffer as GGR fell 6 percent to €61m.
