Online gaming company Bwin.party has a strong sports betting portfolio and a popular online poker player database and has established itself to be one of the leaders in the online gaming market across the globe. The company which is owned primary by two main family shareholders had announced late last year that it was open for a takeover provided the price was right.
During the last 6 months, Bwin.party has received a number of proposals but none of them have materialized into a final sale. One such proposal came from rivals William Hill and although Bwin.party did express initial interest in proceeding forward, the deal fell through in the end when one of the main stakeholders decided that the offer was too small.
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Bwin.party has received a lot more interesting proposals from other rivals such as GVC and 888 Holdings and due to this sudden interest, the market has reacted in a positive way and shareprices for Bwin.party has gone up during the last couple of days, much to the delight of its shareholders.
888 Holdings sent in a proposal on Monday with an offer to purchase Bwin.party outright by using both cash and shares. The company released a statement which said “The Board believes that there is significant industrial logic in a combination of 888 and bwin.party, benefiting both companies and all shareholders and, accordingly, has submitted a proposal regarding the acquisition of the entire issued and to be issued share capital of bwin.party for consideration comprising cash and 888 shares.”
GVC appears to be really interested in closing the deal with Bwin.party as the company has decided to join forces with Amaya Gaming, the parent company of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker and submit a rather attractive proposal to takeover Bwin.party. Unofficial reports suggest that by collaborating together, they were able to send in a takeover proposal for €1.5bn (£1bn) which his almost twice as much that William Hill initially offered.
If Bwin.party does accept this proposal and closes the deal with Amaya Gaming and GVC then both parties will have to decide on how they are going to leverage the Bwin.party portfolio. Analysts suggest that GVC would take over Bwin’s sports betting business and Amaya Gaming will take over the online poker business. If the deal goes through, GVC management would be involved with a 2 year re-structuring project to ensure that the takeover is smooth and successful.
