After international gambling company ‘The Stars Group’ announced earlier in the year that they had successfully acquired both the Australian branch of William Hill and CrownBet, it was only a matter of time until the two merged under a new name. On Monday, the 13th of August, the two companies officially re-branded under the old BetEasy name to instantly create one of the biggest online betting sites in Australia.
BetEasy is essentially the CrownBet site revamped and renamed, but the potential for new promos and a new player in the game excites us! You can see a full review of the brand new BetEasy site here!
BetEasy was originally launched in 2005 and became one of the bigger names in Australian betting when Sportsbet founder and former CEO Matthew Tripp, with the backing of James Packer and Crown Resorts, purchased the company and turned it into CrownBet.
CrownBet thrived with the backing of Crown Resorts already established gambling background and strong marketing team, becoming one of the biggest online betting agencies in Australia. However, early in 2018, Packer and Crown Resorts looked its 62% majority share in the company, and the search began for suitable buyers.
CrownBet CEO Matthew Tripp conducted a thorough search for new partners, that would ensure the company would continue to run independently under a management team led by Tripp himself.
"We scoured the globe for the best partner for the business and The Stars Group quickly became our number-one target," Mr Tripp said.
The Stars Group, who controls the massively popular PokerStars online poker company as well as a host of other gambling agencies, agreed to purchase CrownBet for $150 million. The Canadian based conglomerate has over 115 million customers world wide and is worth over $5 billion.
Along with the CrownBet deal, The Stars Group also announced they had completed a deal to acquire the Australian branch f massively popular online gambling site William Hill. With that, all of the pieces were in place for the massive merger.
As of Monday, the 13th of August 2018, both William Hill and CrownBet ceased to exist in the Australian online gambling landscape, with the two being replaced and redirected to BetEasy.com.au. All members of William Hill and CrownBet were automatically merged into a BetEasy account and their account balances, pending bets and rewards points were switched over.