888 Holdings takes over bwin.party

A Billion Dollar bidding competition on the gambling sector has come to an end – and 888 Holdings is the lucky winner. The online gambling company bwin.party is taken over by its smaller rival 888. The new owner pays £898m (equal to around 1,4 billion US-$) in shares and cash for bwin.party. 888 Holdings has beaten opponents GVC and Amaya, who were willing to pay even more for bwin.party. But the management refused their offer of £906 in the end.

bwin.party itself was created by a merger: the Austrian company bwin and the british PartyGaming united back in March 2011. But the merger of some of the biggest brands in online gambling (bwin and PartyPoker) never really paid off and the stocks lost around two thirds of its former worth. The management of bwin.party decided to sell the company. 888 Holdings and a consortium of GVC (interested in the Casino and Sportsbetting branch) and Amaya (the company behind PokerStars and Full Tilt – interested in the Poker brands of bwin.party) turned out to be the most serious bidders.

From a players point of view, the decision for 888 Holings should be a good one. Amaya with its brands PokerStars and FullTilt already is the biggest Online Poker Company by far and would have broadened its market dominance with a takeover of bwin Poker and Partypoker even more. 888 poker currently is the second biggest poker room worldwide and might be able to apply some pressure on PokerStars.

For 888 itself the deal makes perfectly sense, as it will not only lead to synergys in the poker and casino market. 888 also gets a lot more relevence in the sportsbetting sector where 888 sports has never managed to compete with the big bookies. bwin is one of the top brands worldwide.

For more information about the brands involved in the deal, please check out our reviews:

• 888 Poker App
• 888 Casino App
• bwin Poker App
• PartyPoker App

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Josh Miller

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