Open the TigerGaming app this week and it no longer deals you a hand. It hands you a link. From Wednesday, October 28, 2026, the plan laid out by SportsBetting.ag was that the TigerGaming client would do one last job: send every player to SportsBetting.ag to download a new app or log in through the browser. After 27 years of dealing cards, the tiger is now a signpost.
The first public warning came on Friday, October 9, from MTT DB, an X account and tournament-data site that tracks the online and live MTT circuit. It reported that BetOnline's "rest of the world" poker room would close within two weeks, and signed off with "1999-2026" and a GG. The real timeline ran a little longer: October 9 to October 28 is 19 days. The official explanation, when it came, fit in one line of SportsBetting.ag's migration FAQ: "SportsBetting.ag has acquired TigerGaming's player accounts and balances."
For most players the money side is calm. The operator says funds were withdrawable before the move and stay withdrawable after it, and the tables do not change, because TigerGaming, SportsBetting.ag and BetOnline have been dealing to the same player pool for years. If you already know the BetOnline client, you know the software; our BetOnline review covers the network, the lobby and the cashier in detail. What does change is the name on the lobby, the rewards scheme and a short list of details that can bite, mostly if you had accounts on both sites.
Twenty-seven years of the tiger
TigerGaming opened in 1999, two years before PokerStars dealt its first hand, and its logo was still wearing a "since 1999" tagline this October. It grew into the usual offshore bundle of sportsbook, casino and poker room, and its poker side ended up on the Chico Poker Network, the shared player pool behind BetOnline, SportsBetting.ag and TigerGaming. One pool, three front doors.
It was never the loudest room on that network. The public timeline of its X account shows nothing newer than February 2014, a retweet of a reload bonus from 2011. But it had its moments, good and bad. The bad one for Australians came in April 2018, when TigerGaming, BetOnline and SportsBetting.ag all walked away from the country after its new online gambling law, giving local players until April 30 to pull their balances, as CalvinAyre reported at the time. Somebody had a far better day on July 5, 2020, when the room's biggest bad beat jackpot paid $198,944.69, according to CardPlayer's TigerGaming review. The same review notes that a flat 10% weekly rakeback arrived in November 2025, less than a year before the lights went out.
There is one loose thread worth mentioning. CardPlayer also notes that TigerGaming's Curaçao licence, held by Thot Management, expired on May 19, 2026 and sits on the regulator's register as "assessment in progress". The Curaçao Gaming Authority is the island's licensing body for offshore gambling operators and has been moving licensees onto a new licensing regime, and CardPlayer points out that plenty of licensees show the same status. SportsBetting.ag's FAQ does not tie the closure to licensing, and we are not going to do it for them.
Same tables, one door fewer
Here is the part that matters at the felt. Because the three brands already shared one pool, a TigerGaming reg grinding the 25NL tables was sitting with BetOnline and SportsBetting.ag players all along. As long as TigerGaming's players are allowed to follow, folding the brand does not drain liquidity out of the network. It removes a lobby skin, a cashier, a support desk and a rewards programme, and leaves the same players dealing the same games.
The likeliest reading is plain cost cutting: three front ends and three support queues for one pool is expensive, and the quietest brand was the obvious one to fold. That is our inference; the operator has said nothing beyond the FAQ.
Your email address decides everything
The single most important detail in the migration rules is whether your TigerGaming email matched an existing SportsBetting.ag account. Everything else hangs off that one fact. There is also a third group, the players with an empty TigerGaming account: nothing was moved for them, and anyone who wants to keep playing has to sign up at SportsBetting.ag from scratch.
That sports-wallet detail is the one that will generate the most confused support chats. If you were registered for a TigerGaming Sunday tournament or holding a stack of satellite tickets, those seats are gone and their value is now cash sitting in the betting side of your SportsBetting.ag account. Check the sports wallet before you go hunting for it in the poker lobby.
The FAQ also spells out a rakeback handover for Path B players. TigerGaming play from October 23 to October 28 is calculated on Friday, October 30 under the old TigerGaming scheme of 10% rakeback, and paid into your SportsBetting.ag account. Play from October 28 onwards falls under the SportsBetting.ag VIP club and lands in the poker wallet. So a player who paid $240 in rake across those last TigerGaming days should expect $24 on Friday, because 10% of $240 is $24.
The switch itself came with scheduled downtime on both platforms, and the operator says all tournaments and cash games were ended before it started, as with any normal maintenance window.
The fine print worth a second read
Your records stay behind. Transaction and betting history does not migrate, and requests for it go to SportsBetting.ag support. Slightly confusingly, another answer in the same FAQ says Path A players keep their "poker history". Do not test which one is right. If you track results for staking deals, tax or plain vanity, ask support for your full TigerGaming records now rather than in six months.
One seat per human. SportsBetting.ag allows one account per player. Anyone who ends up with both a migrated TigerGaming account and an existing SportsBetting.ag account will hear from the security team, and the network blocks two accounts from sitting in the same game. The FAQ also tells TigerGaming players not to open a fresh SportsBetting.ag account, because doing so cuts them off from their migrated settings.
Restrictions travel. Account limits, whether the house set them or you did, carry over. Self-exclusions and time-outs stay in force, and a self-excluded account is not transferred at all. Some other restricted accounts may not transfer either, in which case the TigerGaming account is simply closed.
The cashier looks familiar. All 19 payout methods match line for line, from Bitcoin, Tether and Litecoin to bank wire and person-to-person transfers, and yes, the TRUMP memecoin made the cut. Limits are a different story: SportsBetting.ag says they can differ and points players to its cashier for the personal numbers. KYC documents already on file carry over, though the fraud team can still ask for fresh ones. Open sports bets move across too.
No sweetener. Asked whether migrating players get a welcome offer or a bonus for the hassle, the FAQ answers with a flat no.
The age claim. On safety, the FAQ says SportsBetting.ag has been operating for more than 25 years. The footer of the same page dates the brand's place in online gaming and poker to 2011, which by our count is 15 years (2026 minus 2011). Maybe the FAQ is borrowing the tiger's years. Maybe someone rounded generously. Either way, the footer and the FAQ do not agree.
Rest of the world, US-shaped landing
The open question is geography. MTT DB described TigerGaming as the network's room for players outside the United States, while BetOnline and SportsBetting.ag are the brands best known to American players. The migration FAQ says nothing about which countries SportsBetting.ag will accept. It only says that "certain account restrictions" may stop a transfer, and that some of those players could be allowed to sign up fresh once the switch is done. If you play from outside the US and your old login does not work on SportsBetting.ag, talk to support before you try anything creative, because a second account is exactly what the security team is watching for.
On the forums the send-off has been short. In a CardsChat thread titled "Rip Tigergaming", the thread starter summed it up as players being left to cash out or move their money to SportsBetting.ag, and admitted he had an account but barely played there. The reply came from a poster who had played on a few dozen sites over the years and somehow never this one. Not much of a wake for a room older than PokerStars, but online poker has never been sentimental about its old brands.
So the tiger goes out the way most old offshore skins do: no farewell tournament, no final leaderboard, just a redirect, a rakeback payment on a Friday and a sports wallet full of converted tickets.
BetOnline deals the same games to the same pool you knew at TigerGaming, with its own promotions and cashier. If you are weighing it against the rest of the market, we have rated it alongside every room we track. The network's one-seat-per-player rule still applies at shared tables, so read the terms before you sign up.
Sources: SportsBetting.ag TigerGaming migration page and FAQ · MTT DB on X, October 9, 2026 · CardPlayer TigerGaming review · CalvinAyre, April 26, 2018 · CardsChat forum.
18+. Gambling laws differ by country and state; play only where online poker is legal for you, and set limits before you sit down. If it stops being fun, step away and talk to someone.
