The major online Scandinavian betting group Unibet is planning to
leave the B2B - 24Hr poker network and move completely to the Microgaming
Poker Network by September 2006, a company spokesman revealed this
week.
Since the acquisition of French-language MrBookmaker in August 2005,
Unibet had been running two poker platforms, B2B and Microgaming.
The move to one common technology provider will take effect from September
this year.
Petter Nylander, chief executive of Unibet, said: “When
I joined Unibet I wanted to have a clear strategy that would focus
on customer acquisition, retention and brand. We wanted to focus on
our core product, focusing on our front end to maximize our bookmaking
experience while working with world class poker or casino suppliers.”
With MrBookmaker already on the Microgaming network, Nylander says
the Isle of Man based software company’s strength in casino
games was another factor that influenced his decision. “In
the short term we will have bigger tournaments and higher liquidity.
We think the future of poker will be where players are offered a poker-casino
hybrid kind of game where they are able to play casino-style games
during hands. Microgaming is one of the leading developers of those
types of games.”
Nylander said that many platforms have been thoroughly evaluated by
the company for over a year, and Microgaming are deemed to provide
the best offering for Unibet´s customers.
Unibet will achieve several advantages by streamlining this technological
platform: a single platform means safer and more cost-effective development
and maintenance. The Microgaming platform also offers significantly
better potential for the development of more games in the future,
Nylander said. "All players from 21 countries will now
have the possibility to challenge each other and we can improve our
offer of poker and create attractive tournaments and more playable
tables."
Nylander said Unibet had been able to benchmark Microgaming’s
performance from its involvement with MrBookmaker and that the move
to the new network marked the next step in the company’s progress:
“The crossover and boundaries between poker and casino
games are getting smaller all the time and we wanted a strong software
provider who would enable us to cover them all,” Nylander
added.