Wizard of Odds Sold for $2.35 Million
Popular casino information website Wizard of Odds has recently been sold for approximately $2 Million to Latest Casino Bonuses. The Wizard of Odds is a well known website that offers a wealth of knowledge to players that love land based and online gambling. The original owner, Michael Shackelford and new owner Joshua, sat down with CasinoSlots.net for an interview. In addition to being business partners, Mike and Josh are enjoy competitive sports. They recently had a rope climbing contest, which can be viewed at the bottom of this page.
Here is an exerpt from the interview:
Josh – Why the vast interest in acquiring www.wizardofodds.com?
The site is great, Mike has built what is the best resource for understanding and teaching people how to gamble on pretty much every casino game one can think of, and google has given the site credit for just that.
Josh - Was it a difficult decision in purchasing WOO for the enormous price tag and is it true that it is the highest amount of money ever paid for a gambling affiliate site?
It was difficult because usually when you value any affiliate site you give an earnings multiplier of between 18-36 months depending on factors like quality, seo and the current market place. And that is what we have done in the past with large purchases like gamesandcasino.com, bingoreviewer.co.uk and onlineblackjack.com, but with the two big wizard sites wizardofodds.com & wizardofvegas.com we had to look at things differently because they were not earning much money at all.
We would have loved to have paid 36 months earnings as a price tag but it just would not sell for that. So we valued the content and the traffic and we hope with some small changes to how the site promotes casinos we can see a much higher conversion rate.
Mike – How long did you contemplate selling your site?
The idea started to get seriously discussed in early August 2014. My sites were in financial trouble and I entertained various proposals to increase revenue as well as an outright sale.
Josh – How long were you in negotiations?
I contacted Mike when he was posting on the WOV that he was having trouble with the banks in Cyprus and finances were running low, I had never been in contact before then so it took some time before he took me seriously and then we negotiated for a few months.
The first time we met I offered him US$1.6 million and 3 years minimum employment and we went back and forth from that offer for some time, with changes in price and structure and other parties making different offers.
In the end another party entered the fray and outbid me by a fair margin and gave Mike a take it or leave it offer because they said did not want a bidding war. I had to think hard and bring in a business partner that runs casinolistings.com to give me the confidence in the potential of the site before making a higher offer and purchasing the site.
For the rest of this interview, please click here.
