Poll results: Amaya and Hills right to abandon merger talks

Amaya and William Hill were right to call off their merger negotiations, according to a big majority of respondents to this week’s poll.

Almost 70% said the deal did not make strategic sense, although that figure was closer to 60% earlier in the week before the deal was nixed on Tuesday.

Opposition rose to closer to 80% when the companies themselves accepted that the industrial logic of the deal didn’t quite add up.

The decision was certainly influenced to some extent by Hill’s largest shareholder Parvus Asset Management, which criticised several aspects of the deal, claiming it would “destroy shareholder value”.

Chief among the issues was the combined debt of around £2.4bn, as well as the perceived risk of Amaya’s grey market activity and its looming court battle in Kentucky, where the state is demanding a £750m fine.

However almost a third of poll respondents agreed on the strategic logic which saw the companies get as far as they did on the deal.

The biggest benefits would undoubtedly have come from cross-selling Amaya’s 100 million-plus customer database – around 40% of whom already bet on sports online – into William Hill’s sportsbook.

Likewise Hills would have benefited from Amaya’s geographical diversity and industry-leading tech.

While sources close to the situation suggest a deal may have been done without the press leak and subsequent public scrutiny, EGR readers and the companies themselves ultimately agreed that the negatives outweighed the positives