888.com Wants to Discuss Mergers Also: Ladbrokes?
As Gambling911.com predicted last week, 888.com looks to follow PartyGaming’s lead and begin looking for attractive acquisition targets. 888.com typically follows whatever PartyGaming does. In 2007, 888.com agreed to begin cooperating with U.S. authorities only after Party did so.
888 is “highly likely” to enter into merger discussions with interested parties in the next six months as the egaming market continues to consolidate following last week’s Bwin/PartyGaming tie-up, its CEO (Gigi Levy) has exclusively revealed to eGR.
Levy said he did not yet know which company or companies 888 Holdings would potentially merge with, if it decided to do so, but did not rule out a deal with listed rival Ladbrokes.
In regard to the PartyGaming/Bwin merger plans announced last week, Levy explained that the combined companies would still represent less than 10 percent of the overall market and that 888.com could still compete.
“We are not talking about someone controlling 50% of the market, giving us no chance to compete. We are talking about an entity which is significantly larger than us, but still is less than 10% of a very fragmented market. In that regard, I don’t see us changing anything in our strategy because of that,” he added.
888.com reported stagnant results for the first part of 2010 with only bingo seeing an increase.
Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
