Party Gaming Expanding into Sportsbook Sector

Once again, this week, online Internet gambling industry website PartyGaming captured the lead in Britain’s business news. They announced that they are making a GBP 500 million purchase designed to help them to gain a foothold in the sports betting sector.
The Guardian newspaper reported that PartyGaming is about to carry out a series of acquisitions that will place it squarely in the center of the sportsbook arena. In order to pay for these acquisitions they will be using funds acquired through a bond issue expected to result in the accumulation of close to GBP 500 million. This is subsequent to their recent launching of a backgammon site that can be reached by going to PartyGammon.com, and its possibly as much as GPB 20 million investment in the sponsorship of World Series of Poker 2006.

So as to avoid problems with those in the United States that are against online gambling, PartyGaming has made the decision to not receive bets from the States. Ladbroke and other well known sports betting establishments are did the same. Sportingbet is the sole exception.

Mitch Garber is PartyGamings recently appointed CEO. The amount of money that is being raised reflects his level of commitment to the project. It also shows that the company’s primary shareholders are committed to limiting company risk through diversification. Since almost four fifths of the company’s customers are located in the United States, the efforts of Senators there and other politicians, to ban online gambling, has acted to bring down the company’s share price.
The initial purchase of the company in this diversification venture is expected to a solely privately held European operation that has yet to be named. The amount involved will be relatively low as a part of the fund raising effort. Results will possibly be made known within the next two weeks. This will be followed by other ventures say those in the bond market who are aware of PartGaming’s dealings.

Placing bets on sport activities over the Internet is a yet to be strongly established market in Europe where PartyGaming's initial acquisitions will most likely be aimed.

As a part of the events to take place in Las Vegas in August, which will be on television, PartyGaming has invested heavily in promoting its name. This form of strategic move into the area of sport betting may be also seen in connection with the televised World Cup matches. In fact the rush of erstwhile online poker players to view the televised matches has resulted in a cut back in online poker play.

In particular in Europe, although not as big as formerly expected by bookmakers, the World Cup has definitely helped in the marketing of sports betting.

PartyGaming sees sports betting as going well with its ongoing activities. In addition to its newly released backgammon site, PartyGaming group has been successful in the area of online poker. They do this through the inception of what has been called a "shared purse" technique allowing players to use one account to gamble at the various sites. Undoubtedly the sports betting option will become a part of this technology.

Rather than go on with their original concept of diversifying into a land-based brick and mortar casino operation, it is believed that PartyGaming will stick to its commitment as a Internet-only business.

Many privately held companies such as 888 Holdings which runs Pacific Poker, or some other non United States based sporting book site,  have been seeking to merge with PartyGaming in view of their perception of PartyGaming’s imminent move into the region of online poker web sites.

Another possible PartyGaming acquisition may be Gamebookers. In addition to their many customers in close to 150 countries, they also offer cutting edge wagering technology.

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