According to several of the most reliable media sources, Amaya Gaming Group, Inc. has purchased the Ongame network. It appears that the final price for Ongame is between $6.5 and $8 million, which is about 25% the amount Shuffle Master had originally offered.
Montreal-based online gaming provider Amaya has been said to be interested in acquiring the network for the past two weeks. Official announcement of the acquisition is expected to happen next week, during the G2E gaming expo in Las Vegas.
Most surprising in the deal is the low price, considering that Shuffle Master paid €19.5 million for Ongame to bwin.party on 6 March, with an upcoming additional €10 million in 5 years, following the legalisation of real money online poker in the United States. In June, however, the Las Vegas-based developer backed out of the deal, being dissatisfied with how the regulated markets in Europe had been working and the regulation of the US market being uncertain.
The .com platform of the Ongame network is currently the 5th biggest actor on the market but they are also present on the regulated Italian and French markets. The cash game traffic of the network has dropped by 20% in the past year, falling behind its greatest competitors, PartyPoker and iPoker. In the latest months, though, the player pool has started to increase once again.
Since no official announcement has been published yet, the plans of Amaya Gaming for the network are currently unknown.
