Coral Eurobet’s future as a member of the Ongame poker network has been thrown into doubt since news of the agreed BetandWin takeover of Ongame was announced last week.
As reported last week by eGaming Review, European sports betting operator BetandWin has agreed a €474m (£322m or US$566m) takeover of the Swedish poker network.
Coral Eurobet only joined the Ongame network in November, but industry insiders suggest that as one of BetandWin’s main competitors in the European sports betting market, Coral Eurobet would not want to share its poker product with one of its main rivals as the risk of losing customers within the BetandWin-Ongame sports and poker platform would only intensify.
Coral Eurobet withdrew from the PartyGaming network as a result of Party’s software platform switch in early October and subsequently announced it was joining the Ongame network in late November.
Industry observers are expecting Coral Eurobet to leave the Ongame network sooner rather than later. Speculation suggests BetandWin’s main priority will be its poker customers and the fact that it will own all the proprietary technology will be viewed as a threat to any network partner that also operates sportsbooks and is in direct competition with it.
However, Coral Eurobet has already been affected by the fall out from the Party platform switch and may want to consolidate its poker offering before thinking of moving to another network.
With no further developments expected before the end of the year, the first few months of 2006 are expected to provide some clarification of the situation. No one at Coral Eurobet was available for comment.
sorce: egr magazine
