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HEADLINE: Ongame Poker Network Up For Sale?

Story:
The impact of the merger between Party Poker and bwin continues to reverberate through the online poker industry. The latest tremor: Confirmation that the merger will likely result in the sale of the Ongame Poker Network.

That’s the word from a bwin spokesperson via EGR, who confirmed that the poker arm of bwin would considered redundant in the structure of the new company.

Ongame is not a minor site, consistently ranking in the top ten in traffic reports from PokerScout; if you include the .it and .fr arms of the network, it can legitimately be considered one of the top five poker networks in the world, easily outpacing major networks such as CEREUS and Merge.

It is, however, a good deal smaller than the Party Poker family of online poker rooms, a reality which apparently will lead to a rather unique opportunity in the online poker industry – namely, the chance to acquire one of the largest poker rooms in the world.

Bwin purchased Ongame in 2005 for 474m pounds, back when the room still accepted US traffic; Ongame stopped offering poker to US customers post-UIGEA.

Expect this story to get more interesting as word of potential suitors begins to emerge.

Some questions that quickly come to mind: How will the newly merged Party / bwin entity handle the sale of what would almost immediately become one of their largest competitors in the online poker sphere? Would a current major network like Full Tilt be interested, and will Party / bwin even entertain offers from companies such as Full Tilt given Party’s hyper-conservative approach to mollifying US regulators? Is Ongame the chance that a US operator is looking for as regulation approaches in that country, and would Ongame’s history of taking US customers pre-UIGEA pose any hurdle to such a buyer?

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