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June
PartyGaming plans £500m move into sports betting
Online Casino News - Stratford,CT,USA -June 30, 2006
PartyGaming is set to unveil plans to expand into the sports betting
arena.
The poker firm is to begin a series of acquisitions to be funded
with the proceeds of a bond issue that could raise as much as £500m.
The first purchase is rumoured to be a privately-owned European
operator, and will be relatively small in the context of the fund-raising.
PartyGaming's share price has been hit by attempts of conservative
Senators in the USto ban, or at least restrict, online gambling
in the US, where about 80% of the group's customers live.
In a similar stance to sports betting giants such as Ladbrokes,
it is understood that the company has decided not to accept sports
bets from the US in an effort to limit confrontations with the anti-online
gambling lobby.
The football World Cup has highlighted the need for expansion into
sports betting with most online poker operators seeing a fall in
activity on their sites this month, as European online poker players
have tuned in to the football.
The World Cup - despite being less profitable than bookmakers had
hoped because of the lack of surprise results - has also been a
huge marketing boost for sports betting companies.
Sports betting will continue the diversification of PartyGaming
after they successfully encouraged their players to play the new
blackjack game and have also launched a backgammon site.
Those efforts have relied upon so-called 'shared purse' technology,
which allows players to channel their gambling on all games through
one account. A new sports betting facility is likely to be put onto
the same platform.
Source Code: http://www.igamingbusiness.com/article-detail.php?articleID=10894 |
