Shuffle Master, a casino game developer operating in Las Vegas is reportedly in "advanced talks" in acquiring the Ongame Network, according to pokerfuse. As pokerfuse reports, Shuffle Master is in advanced talks in purchasing the Ongame Network, an online poker network that is currently the home of poker rooms like Betfair, Betsson, bwin. The news was confirmed by the Sunday times, they reported that Shuffle Master is currently in talks with bwin.party. The price of the Ongame Network is surprisingly low, only €16 million according to some predictions.
According to Roth Capital Markets‘ analyst Todd Eilers, it’s very beneficial for Shuffle Master to purchase Ongame, because they have been concentrating on American market ever since the Wire Act prohibiting online poker in the US was proven not to affect poker, only sports betting. By this, online poker became legal in states which legalize poker. Shuffle Master is one of the 12 applicants who already applied for an operating license in the state of Nevada. The state, however has not yet announced exactly when they will assign the licenses, nor when it the poker rooms can finally start their business.
The current owner of Ongame‘s license, bwin.party was born after bwin and PartyPoker‘s owner, PartyGaming were merged in 2010. Negotiations of the merger have already started by early 2009. Bwin.party therefore became the biggest gaming company on Earth worth around €2,5 billion. After the fusion, two networks remained, PartyPoker and Ongame, with 25 poker skins including Betfair, Betsson, bwin, RedKings, and EuroPoker. Since bwin‘s player pool will soon migrate to PartyPoker‘s network, Ongame will be a "surplus asset". Bwin.party announced last year that they will sell Ongame, but in the last 7 months, they couldn’t find a buyer. Currently they are in advanced negotiations with Shuffle Master, but the deal couldn’t be strucked before 2012.
Bwin.party‘s co-CEO Jim Ryan stated that the merging of bwin’s and PartyPoker‘s player pool will happen around this summer at the .com domain, and a bit later at .it and .fr rooms.
Ongame is currently the 6th biggest online poker network on the market according to PokerScout, but after bwin separates, a major dropback is expected. According to Simon Holliday, H2 Gambling Capital‘s analyst Ongame might experience the loss of 50% of its player pool after the separation. Ongame‘s CEO Martin Lerby, however, is quite optimistic about the future.
"Ongame is not dependent on bwin liquidity and the bwin size has been highly exaggerated in the media. On the dot com side I am not worried at all. We signed a deal with Sportingbet that will allow us to bridge some of the missing liquidity that will go out. We have some really strong deals in the pipeline, and we are still big enough to have good action and tournament guarantees. The partners in the network will see that clearly. It’s obviously a bigger challenge in the local markets where bwin is a bigger part of the networks. But we are still positive and hope we will have growing networks in those countries too. We are working intensively in sales there and have a good pipeline of new operators there. It looks promising" – Lerby told to InsidePokerBusiness.
With the acquisition of Ongame Network, Shuffle Master will have an advanced poker software that have decent Windows and Mac clients and even mobile applications such as iOS and Android apps.
Ongame was purchased by bwin (betandwin back then) for €473,6 million in 2006 after UIGEA (which prohibits deposits to online gambling sites in the United States) came around.
