Bwin poker surges on back of Gioco Digitale buy
Bwin's purchase of Italian operator Gioco Digital saw its fourth quarter gross gaming revenue (GGR) rise 13%, reflecting strong growth in poker in Italy, the Austrian operator reported today...
BWIN’s purchase of Italian operator Gioco Digital saw its fourth quarter gross gaming revenue (GGR) rise 13%, reflecting strong growth in poker in Italy, the Austrian operator reported today.
The GGR of 132.9m ($179.6m, £117.5m) follows Bwin’s acquisition of Italy’s Gioco Digitale in September 2009, which was designed to take advantage of the liberalisation of the Italian market and has boosted Bwin’s poker revenue substantially.
As a result of the deal, poker revenue grew by 36% to 37.6m compared to the same period in 2008, but would have been 10% lower without the Italian deal.
The deal lifted GGR overall up 12%, and would have been just 1% higher without it.
Casino revenue grew by 5% year-on-year (YoY) to 20.2m, while games revenue rose 36% YoY to 8.4m.
However the Austrian operator showed relative weakness in its core sports market where revenue grew just 3% YoY to 66.6m, which the company blamed on a weak December sports margin.
The group cites a combination of this and adverse currency movements as the reasons behind an expected EBITDA for the year of 100-105m.
Brokerage Daniel Stewart was optimistic about the coming year for Bwin. Analyst James Hollins said:
“We continue to believe that 2010 will be a bumper year, stoked by the Italian market growth expanding into cash poker, bingo and casino games in H1 2010, customer acquisitions around the soccer World Cup and near-certain industry consolidation.”
Industry speculation has concerned a potential merger between Bwin and PartyGaming to combine Bwin’s strength in sports betting with Party’s position in games.
As reported on EGRmagazine.com, Bwin recently also announced a new push on business-to-business via the hire of a new managing director for its poker subsidiary Bwin Games AB.