Rumors about the sale of the Ongame poker network have been in the news for some time now. Bwin merged with Party Gaming last year and the new company wanted to move all the Bwin sportsbook customers to the more popular Party Poker network. Party Poker has been rated as one of the best in Europe for some time now and has scored the highest rating by reviewers on Pokerscout.com. As a result Bwin was looking to sell Ongame as surplus. Early in the year it appeared that Shuffle Master, the Nevada based developer of automatic card shufflers and gaming tables would be purchasing the company, but the deal fell through after Nevada failed to pass online poker legislation. Sources informed me that Shuffle Master was convinced that Nevada would be passing legislation by the summer and the company hoped to lure some of the Nevada casinos to the network by providing a ready to launch poker product. After it was clear that Nevada wouldn’t be legalizing poker any time soon, however, Shuffle Master backed out of the deal.

When Shuffle Master decided it was no longer interested, there were rumors that Zynga Poker, the Facebook social media poker site, would be purchasing the company. On the surface the purchase seemed to make little sense but as I wrote on OSGA.com at the time of the rumors surfacing, Zynga officials believed that having all licenses and paperwork in place, a base to launch from and some goodwill with the Ongame name would help make real money Zynga poker a success from the get go. It appears however, that Zynga has soured on the idea, possibly due to some negative pressure from Facebook and if they do indeed launch a real money site in the upcoming year they will do all the legwork from scratch. In all fairness, Zynga Poker has over 115,000 daily players on Facebook (albeit free social poker), while Ongame has fewer than 10,000 players. Zynga still says it is interested as apparently are Playtech and Gtech but the latter two probably are only interested in Ongame to eliminate potential competition to their already existing poker networks.

The new name to come forward as a possible purchaser of Ongame is Amaya Gaming, a Montreal based entertainment solutions provider. Amaya bought Cryptologic a couple of months ago but Cryptologic only produces casino and arcade games. Amaya is looking for a turn key poker product to complement that purchase. Amaya said it is interested in providing the products to customers in Europe and Asia but no doubt it has its eyes on Canadian provinces as well (and particularly Ontario) since many provinces are planning on introducing online casinos and poker. B.C. has hired Paddy Power to run their games and Quebec has its own provider but the other provinces will all be going online soon and Amaya would love to provide the provinces with a Canadian owned alternative.

To add some fodder to speculation that Ongame’s sale is imminent, this week Betfair announced that it will be launching online poker in Italy and Spain using the iPoker network, owned and operated by Playtech. The company insisted that the move will not apply to their other markets which still use the Ongame network but sources have told me that it’s just a matter of time that Betfair moves all its customers to iPoker. Several affiliates that were on the Ongame network moved to either the iPoker or Microgaming network apparently with mixed feelings from their customers. Some common complaints of both iPoker and Microgaming are that there are far too many disruptions, that the support leaves a lot to be desired and that the tournaments seem to be filled with bots. Of course those complaints are common with many sites. iPoker has been rated 1.5 out of 10 by reviewers on Pokerscout.com and Microgaming has been rated 2.3 out of 10. Ongame was slightly better with 2.8 out of 10. Party Poker has the highest rating with 4.8 out of 10.

Ironically, Amaya Gaming provides Betfair with the software for their arcade.

Contact Hartley via email at Hartley[at]osga[dot]com.

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