EMPIRE POKER SOLD TO PARTY POKER
| Date | February 2006 |
| Price | $250,000,0001 |
| Asset | Empire Poker |
| Buyer |  |
| Status | Still exits on the Party Poker network |
| Software | No |
| Success |  |
Empire Poker decided to fight its big brother Party Poker who excluded Empire Poker from the main player pool so that Empire Poker's players no longer were playing against Party Poker players.
Empire Online claimed it was going to fight Party Poker in court with a law suit.2 This never happened. Prior to the final sale Empire Poker allegedly turned down a major offer of $708,000,0003 only 4 months earlier. The struggle turned out to be fruitless and the owner Norm Lanir from Empire Poker gave in and decided to settle for $250,000,000.
Before this happened Empire Poker had been in talks with Sportingbet who had shown interested in Empire Online in September and made a bid of £790 million.
Whether it was greed and the fact that Empire Online's executives and shareholders felt robbed and pushed into a corner by Party Poker is hard to tell.
Empire Poker had a contract with Party Poker but due to major rake back problems Party Poker decided not to honor the deal based on the fact that many Empire Poker affiliates was offering rake back to its players hence making many players switch from Party Poker to Empire Poker.
1 pokernews.com 15 February 2006
2 pokernews.com 21 November, 2005
3 pokernews.com 3 November, 2005