According to SBC News, online gaming firm 888 Holdings plc may make one more run at bwin.party in an attempt to intercept it from the waiting arms of GVC Holdings and Amaya Gaming.
Last week, bwin.party Digital Entertainment and GVC Holdings both publicly confirmed that the two are in talks and that GVC had made an initial offer to purchase bwin.party, the owner of partypoker. While the offer has not been finalized, it is reported to be for 110p per share of bwin.party’s stock, valuing the deal at about £900 million (around $1.4 billion).
GVC Holdings is not a household name, but one of its brands, sports betting heavy hitter SportingBet.com, is. One of the interesting parts of the potential deal is that GVC can’t afford to purchase bwin.party itself, so it brought in acquisition-happy Amaya Gaming to help out. In an industry-shaking deal, Amaya Gaming purchased the parent company of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker last year for $4.9 billion. It is assumed that if the deal goes through, bwin.party would be split up, with Amaya getting partypoker and the other, smaller network skins, and GVC taking control of bwin and partybets, the sportsbook offerings.
It would be quite interesting, perhaps even scary, if partypoker, PokerStars, and Full Tilt poker were all under one umbrella. Amaya would just dominate the internet poker industry.
In a statement confirming the initial bid, bwin.party said last week, “The Board has considered the GVC proposal, the potential benefits of which it believes can accrue to bwin.party shareholders from a combination of the two companies and the commitment shown to resolving a number of transaction-related issues, and has determined to work with GVC so that they can finalize their offer over the coming days.”
GVC expressed great confidence that everything would work out, saying, “Based on our experience with the successful SportingBet acquisition and restructuring, we believe that the potential combination of GVC and bwin.party would result in substantial financial and operating synergies and represent an excellent opportunity for both GVC and bwin.party shareholders.”
That still leaves 888 Holdings on the outside looking in. 888 has tried to acquire bwin.party in the past, obviously to no avail. SBC News did not confirm that 888 will definitely give it another try, but rather that analysts believe it will. 888’s problem, though, is that it is unlikely to be able to beat GVC/Amaya’s price. Instead, SBC sees 888 as trying to play up the non-financial aspects of a merger, including similar Israeli founding history, that both companies have offices in Gibraltar, and that both have technology in common. Bottom line, 888 may fall short on cash, but it may try to convince bwin.party that the transition and advance into the future will be easier.
Should the GVC deal be completed and Amaya take over partypoker, Amaya Gaming would control three of the top eight-trafficked poker rooms on the internet. According to PokerScout.com, PokerStars is the runaway top dog of the industry with a seven-day average of 15,000 cash game players, partypoker is seventh with 1,050, and Full Tilt Poker is eighth with 1,000. Country ring-fenced sites PokerStars.it (Italy), PokerStars.es (Spain), and PokerStars.fr (France) are also in PokerScout’s top ten. 888poker is second with 2,300 cash game players.
