Bwin.party to merge liquidity pools
Dot.com liquidity to be merged early summer followed by dot.fr and dot.it later this year.
Bwin.party co-CEO Jim Ryan (pictured) has revealed that the operator is to merge its joint poker liquidity pools over the course of 2012 with the dot.com networks to be combined early in the summer, followed by the French and Italian networks later in the year.
Speaking to PokerStrategy.com, Ryan revealed that by pooling liquidity bwin.party will become the second-biggest dot.com network after PokerStars.com, that suffered a 19% year-on-year drop in liquidity before recovering, and moving into leading positions in France and Italy. The move is part of the integration of the merged companies’ operations, and follows the integration of bwin’s Sajoo player base into its French operations.
The mergers will not be affected by the sale of the Ongame poker network, which was announced to have fallen behind schedule in December last year.
PartyPoker.fr is currently the third-largest poker room in France after Winamax and PokerStars, with a seven-day average of 1080 players, while Ongame’s dot.fr network, which includes bwin’s French room, is ranked sixth. In Italy, Ongame and PartyPoker are ranked 5th and 6th respectively, lagging behind the likes of PokerStars.it and Microgame’s PeoplesNetwork.
Ryan also defended the operator’s inability to close the gap on PokerStars and Full Tilt following Black Friday, highlighting the fact that both sites were still active in Europe. Following the suspension of Full Tilt’s Alderney licence in June, he revealed that the bwin.party picked up around 15% of Tilt’s European traffic.