Rational Group, Owners of PokerStars and Full Tilt, to be Acquired by Amaya Group

The rumors have been spreading for couple weeks now but the guessing game is now over. The press release sent out by the Oldford Group Limited, the parent company of the Rational Group on June 12th 2014 makes it official - Amaya Gaming Group Inc. will be acquiring Rational Group and will be paying the record-breaking price of $4.9 million for this acquisition.

This big transaction will see current owners of the Rational Group give up their positions in the company and Amaya will become the largest publicly-traded online gaming company. Executive management team, however, should stay on board after completion of the transaction in order to secure continued high level of online gaming experience and support the users have become accustomed to.

CEO of Amaya David Baazov clearly stated the company’s intention to follow the road well paved by the years-long experience

One of the Amaya’s plans for the future include the entrance of the PokerStars and Full Tilt back into the US market, which is certainly a good news for all those who have been anxiously awaiting the return of the top-level online poker experience to the American market. That said, they certainly have a bumpy road ahead of them.

Several states in the US have adopted the laws that no company offering service of online gambling after 2006 would be allowed to reenter the market. However, John Pappas, executive director of Poker Players Aliance was very optimistic about the deal and believes that the return of PokerStars to American market would help grow the game.

Amaya has experienced rapid growth in recent years, partly through strategic acquisitions strengthening its core offering. It has an expansive footprint in regulated markets in the USA, Canada and Europe. Rational Group and its main business hardly require any introduction. Since its foundation in 2001, PokerStars has become the world’s largest online poker site and, together with Full Tilt, Rational Group holds a majority of the global market share in real money online poker.

Apart from the two household names in online poker, Amaya will also acquire a number of live tournaments currently owned by the Rational Group, like European Poker Tour and PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

This could mark a whole new chapter for PokerStars and Full Tilt and has a huge potential in terms of online poker domination should they manage to penetrate the American market. The number of nearly $5 billion certainly talks heaps about quality and desirability of Rational Group’s products, so now we can just wait and see what happens once the acquisition is done, which should happen around September 30, 2014.