One of the largest private online gambling companies Betfair has today announced that they are leaving their own poker platform behind and moving to the ongame network.

Betfair is especially strong in the betting exchange market, but despite of their strong efforts (which include for an example the massive sponsorship of European WSOP which takes place in London, UK) they haven’t been able to grab a major share of the online poker market. According to the PokerScout.com which tracks the online poker traffic Betfair is at the moment the 15th largest online poker site / network when ranked based on the average number of active real money cash game poker players.

Thus it didn’t come as a big surprise when Betfair today announced that they are very soon moving to the Ongame poker network. Ongame network is owned by the Austrian online gambling giant BWIN and thus it came as no surprise that the announcement immediately launched rumours about possible merger between Bwin and Betfair. One of the biggest catalysts behind the rumours is the fact that it was just while ago announced that the merger between Bwin and partygaming, which some though to be a sure thing, is not going to happen after all.

Bwin shares were in sharp decline today and ended at 32.37 euros with 3.89% decline for the day. Which was somewhat surprising considering that both of their listed main comptetitors Unibet Group PLC and PartyGaming ended up on + for the day.