PartyGaming to Merge with Bwin Interactive
It was announced today that two big powers in the European online gambling market will merge into one. In a reverse takeover, PartyGaming plans on acquiring Bwin Interactive in a deal valued at $1.76 billion dollars. This would create the world’s biggest traded online gambling company.
According to Bloomberg,
“The merged company, which had reported sales of 682 million euros, will be 51.6 percent owned by Vienna-based Bwin, with PartyGaming of Gibraltar holding the rest, the companies said in a statement today. The new company would be listed in London and have leading positions in online poker, sports betting, casino and games such as bingo, they said.”
So what should anyone make of this merger? Accordeing to Gianmarco Bonacina, an analyst with Equita SIM SpA in Milan this moves puts the combined company in a better financial position versus PokerStars and FullTilt as well as positioning them to take advantage of emerging markets.
Gianmarco told Bloomberg,
“From an industrial point of view this is both an offensive and a defensive move. In Europe, Bwin and PartyGaming are losing market share in poker versus Pokerstars and Fulltilt, so the combination will protect them. In the U.S., the move is offensive. They want to attack that market and are in a better position if they combine.”
Since as of yesterday, the move to regulate online gambling in the United States has been put in motion, PartyGaming Chief Executive Officer Jim Ryan told reporters, “We will immediately be a leader in these markets as they open up.” Also considering online gambling rule revisions are Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Ireland and Spain.
The remaining hurdle of this merger would be to get shareholders to vote in favor of it which the board members of each company will unanimous support and ask each shareholder to vote in favor of it.
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August 3rd, 2010 at 8:36 pm
PartyGaming is huge enough to begin with and a merge with Bwin Interactive will make them the highest hurdle to jump, if any other company wished to try (good luck with that idea). Plus the fact that Harrah’s Entertainment is said to have PartyGaming as one of their online gaming providers, if and when the online gaming market opens in the US, they pretty much have things covered, too.
August 18th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Maybe, I wouldn’t count out Microgaming they have been working behind the scenes for a long time with US land based casinos.
I think you are seeing PartGaming and Bwin just trying to play catchup. Hopefully we will find out soon enough!
August 20th, 2010 at 1:06 am
PartyGaming and Bwin merging….combined they are going to be huge in the online gaming market. We’re gonna have to wait to see how this plays out if the US market opens up.
August 20th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
I agree with Brett. Microgaming is doing something behind closed doors that we may not know about at this time. I heard that they were selling/renting their software out to online casinos for extra revenue.
I also think that with the PartyGaming and Bwin merge that they are trying to regroup to maybe catch up with Microgaming’s moves.