World Poker Tour acquired by Ourgame (China)

i thought this was interesting

a blog piece by Alexandre Dreyfus

"I'm excited to see WPT joining forces with the entrepreneur led company Ourgame, I actually met the CEO few weeks ago, Frank Ng in Beijing, and he did dare to use "Sportify Poker" in front of me :-) The fact that Ourgame is not a gambling company, but clearly a casual gaming portal is amazing, it is the first step of the next evolution of promoting poker not as a gambling, but as a mind sport, a sport, a skill game. Ourgame has a database of 500 million users for their others games (remember, Pokerstars has 82 million) and with their Zynga model, that works well in China, they will leverage the brand WPT, and then poker.

I recall in France, what ignited the poker boom was not the WSOP and Moneymaker, but the World Poker Tour on TV. Period. So having WPT on TV in China will clearly help to boost the sport of poker there. If you think a bit further, you'll acknowledge that most of the successful companies in China are Chinese's companies or financed by chineses investors, like Alibaba, Baidu, Weibo, etc ... There is no Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc ... The country protect its own interests, something we do well in France too ... by failing. Anyway, the Chinese poker boom will come from Chinese investors and co-initiatives. While we are waiting online poker, as we know it, to be regulated in US, something is getting ready in Asia, with the real mix of Casual Gaming, Poker and Mass Market. Yes, that's where the next poker wave could come from. From East to West, not the other way around.

Ourgame is a $700m valuation company, with no capital problem. They can invest into WPT and develop a strong online (play for fun) offer, they invest in the TV, the distribution and the event management.

There was many rumors about potential acquirers, of course including Amaya/Pokerstars which would have created a clear monopoly, MGM due to their partnership with Party, I guess some companies like Playtech, Churchills Downs, etc ... Probably more than half a dozen. What matters is not about who won the acquisition of WPT, but who WPT decided to go with. It was not just a bid, it was a long-term strategic move, and I personally believe that Ourgame was the best one out of all of them. While most of people see only WPT as a poker tour, you'll see WPT and Ourgame becoming a stronger gaming stakeholder in the next 24 months. This is a transformative acquisition for the industry of poker.

First time as well, that a Chinese interests make a move into the sport of poker, new trend ?"