Full Tilt Poker, once the worldwide hub of high stakes online poker may soon merge its liquidity with the PokerStars due to falling traffic. Amaya Inc. is reportedly planning to merge both the poker sites and shut down the brand Full Tilt. FTP has continuously fallen down on traffic and currently sits in 11th rank on the poker room traffic rankings according to PokerScout.
A planned move?
Irrespective of the marketing and operation efforts of Amaya to run FTP, the website hasn’t been able to recover to its average traffic in past one year. As reported by PokerTube, Amaaya may scrap FTP brand in next 6 months after shifting the user base to PokerStars. Employees at the Full Tilt office in Dublin have already been warned and are beginning to look for work elsewhere.
After the acquisition of Rational Group by Amaya, the company has focused on generating revenue and paying off the debts to which the non-performing Full Tilt is seen as a burden in the long run. They revamped their VIP program of PokerStars which saw worldwide protest by the high stakes players. PokerStars made major changes in 3rd party software uses and also shut down the heads up tables. Every move of the company in past 1 year, be it the launch of Spin & Go or starting up with other horizons of gaming market – online casino and betting site leads to the only objective of increasing the profit margins.
Benefits of merger
The decision of merging FTP with PokerStars will reduce the operations and asset management costs while keeping the player base on the best brand PokerStars. Players might also be benefited with this merger as companies tend to roll out bonuses for the player switching accounts and improved loyalty program as PKR Poker announced for its merger with MPN.
The news has come at a time when Amaya CEO David Baazov is planning to acquire the company in all cash settlement and take it private. As believed by many, this will help the company focus on innovation and core business than the profit-driven scattered approach. In all, the poker world may see huge changes in the online poker industry in the coming months of 2016.