Hi all

I wanted to provide you all a first hand update with regards recent sale developments.

As you may have seen bwin.party’s board has today recommended an offer for 888 to acquire bwin.party. At this point in time this is only a recommendation and the process will take a number of months to complete. 888 wants to become one of the top three operators in the industry and is buying bwin.party’s brands and technology to help them achieve this.

There will be no immediate changes to any of the existing bwin.party brands and players will still be able to access their accounts and enjoy the same products in exactly the same way they do now.

We are excited by the prospect of this deal and we believe it will provide our customers with an even better product and enhanced experience.

To view the press release for today’s announcement please visit the bwin.party corporate site - http://bwinparty.com/Investors/offerforbwinparty.aspx

Personally, I think its all very exciting news for our players and look forward to seeing what the future holds!
I will of course keep you all up to date when possible and will share any news here first hand as soon as I am able.
Should you have any strong concerns, as always don't hesitate to PM myself.

Thanks

Colette

Party poker was actually somewhat component though! Exceptional customer service and pretty good site. They should have bought out borgata.

Is this a bidding war between amaya and 888?

I know amaya made a 1.4b offer earlier this month, but not sure the terms were similar

Nevermind, seems like the deal is pretty much final.

"The boards of 888 and bwin.party are pleased to announce that they have reached agreement on the terms of a recommended offer pursuant to which Offeror will acquire the entire issued and to be issued ordinary share capital of bwin.party. "

so this means the players will merge and a bigger playing pool in NJ?

borgata and party have been essentially the same for a while now. 2 skins from the same company one licensed to use borgata's name. -lack of better words to explain it. ie- borgata poker is not fully run by borgata staff. ever notice basic cs responses from borgata have some of the same staff names as the ones from party. both borgata/party run into the ground by same basic cluster of incompetent management. i believe collette said elsewhere borgata poker has different teams than party as far as promos and such but essentially yes same company.

should be interesting what happens if takeover goes through as 888 will have 3 skins to operate versus wsop with 1 until PS pala or whoever else may open up. (assuming above is correct and 888 gets both the party skin and the borgata skin to run)

even if im wrong and 888 just gets the party skin all this does for the nj market till other sites may open is realistically consolidate the skins to less companies . which imo- means you have less competition and the remaining operators can do whatever they want with a "you don't like it tough take it or leave it we are your only choice for poker legally" attitude. less companies means the less the different skins have to do to stay unique to keep an edge over their competition- because in reality there may only be the same 4 skins left (888/wsop/party/borgata) its just a bigger monopoly on a limited market.

the merger may help the global market out more by offering a bigger beast against pokerstars- idk. but for nj i dont feel its anything to get superexcited about unless 888 decides to ax much of the incompetance at party and replace them with those who will do a good job. it also means 888 will have more on the line , more pressure in nj to meet the guarantees for at least 2 different skins now. thats putting a lot more pressure on somebody to try maintain positive growth/profits in the nj market.

im not quite sure how to feel about it or what to expect really. i had stated i was done with borgata/party and i still am now at least until after the takeover. i just hope if 888 keeps the party skin going in nj it gives whatever party staff taking care of the party skin better/different orders as to how to run the skin.

i hope 888 chooses not to have full shared pools between the 888 skin and party/borgata and keeps things at least like they are. it was nice having the option of playing 3 different sites at the same time.

One would assume. Given the liquidity limitations of NJ having two sites again (Amaya/888) would probably be close to optimal. Problem is which software do they use? 888 which is so outdated it is actually worse than the big sites were running 10 years ago... or the buggy disaster that is Party Poker.

When PokerStars enters the market, chances are that the site that becomes option #3 to the majority of players won't be able to remain profitable. NJ just isn't big enough to support 3 networks. hopefully PA legalizes online poker very soon and both states will form a compact, and as a result get at least one more network to play on.