This could be the next big change in the poker world: the bidding war to purchase bwin.Party is currently going on between 888 Holdings and Amaya Gaming (which owns FullTilt and PokerStars already).
The whole battle just heated up, as GVC Holdings teamed up with Amaya Gaming. At the moment the bid for bwin.Party consists of €1,500,000,000 in pure cash and extra portion of just issued GVC shares. The bid came just few hours after 888 Holdings confirmed that it was going to purchase bwin.Party.
The most precious gem in bwin.party’s portfolio is the sports betting, which made €237.1m in revenues in 2014, mostly from from regulated markets, which is also a huge plus.
“Not many people have proprietary sportsbooks. Getting hold of that, which means you don’t have to give millions away to third-party providers, has a lot of appeal,” said Nick Batram, an analyst at Peel Hut.
If the transaction goes through, Bwin.Party's poker business would be immediately sold to Amaya Gaming, with the remainder of the company run by GVC's management through a special purpose vehicle jointly owned by Amaya and GVC, who will control a majority. The main aim behind this would be to get the rest of bwin.Party ready to be sold to Amaya.
|