Inside Asian Gaming

JUly 2015 inside asian gaming 45 Canadian gaming conglomerate Amaya Gaming, which owns Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, is mounting a $1.5 billion share-and- cash bid with London-listed GVC Holdings to see off rival bidder 888 Holdings. “WPT is a non-core asset of the group,” said Bwin.party, which pointed to recent sales of other divisions like its social gaming unit Win. The sale “is wholly consistent with the group’s increased focus on our real money gaming and technology business”, the company added. Ourgame, whose business largely consists of online card-based games for the Chinese market, said that the acquisition was the first step towards building a global social gaming brand. Last year the company made 476 million yuan ($76.7 million) in revenues and said it had 30 million monthly active users, a fraction of gaming group Zynga, which said it had 420 million active users. Frank Ng, chief executive, said he intended to develop games under the WPT brand as an alternative to spending millions on marketing Ourgame’s own brand games. “They can carry us,” he said, noting that Ourgame was currently an unknown in the global gaming marketplace. World Poker Tour, which was founded in 2002 and floated two years later, said the deal would help develop its fledging online gaming business, Club WPT. “[Ourgame] is an incredible technology company, and that was our greatest weakness,” said Adam Pliska, president and chief executive. UK to Address Illegal Bitcoin Gambling Activities In Europe, online gambling has recently caught the attention of regulators in several countries. This sudden interest has been sparked by a desire among regulators to do more to curb problems normally associated with gambling. Some solutions that have been offered include greater transparency, licensing measures, prohibitions that make it harder for minors to engage in online gambling, and stricter rules on marketing and advertising. The concerted efforts to make online gambling safer, which is being touted as promoting “responsible online gambling,” has made its way to the UK where Bitcoin is now at the center of the conversation. The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has made it publicly known to operators utilizing bitcoin that they too must adhere to the country’s gambling laws. The regulators also say that anyone providing gambling services to UK consumers must have a license regardless of their location or the currency being used. These public statements have been made as a response to bitcoin operators conducting activities that the UKGC have deemed outside the law. The CEO of UKGC, Jenny Williams, has said some operators have either been illegally offering gambling products to consumers, illegally advertising gambling, or both. Ālon Leisure Management, LLC, which includes investment firm Oaktree Capital, filed paperwork with Clark County seeking the various land entitlements and permits for the site, which once housed the New Frontier. Mr Pascal, the former president of Wynn Las Vegas, said in an interview that the partnership has been putting together the operations team and spent the past 11 months “maturing the plan” for the hotel-casino. He was somewhat upset that plans leaked out before the partnership was ready to unveil the development. For now, all Mr Pascal will say is the hotel will have 1,100 rooms across two towers “and will provide a full complement of integrated resort offerings.” He would not release any additional details or a cost for developing the hotel-casino. The site was subject to the Strip’s most expensive real estate transaction. Two Israeli companies bought the New Frontier and the land across fromWynn Las Vegas for $1.2 billion—roughly $24.8 million an acre—in 2007. The aging hotel-casino was demolished. The companies planned to build a $5 billion hotel-casino based on the Plaza Hotel in New York City, but the recession killed the project. Reportedly, Mr Packer’s group paid $260 million to acquire the parcel. Mr Packer is the CEO of Australia-based Crown Resorts Ltd. Mr Pascal said the strategic relationship with Crown will be an important factor for Ālon Las Vegas. In May, Malaysia-based Genting Berhad held a formal groundbreaking for the $4 billion Resorts World Las Vegas on the former Echelon site, which is located next to the New Frontier parcel. Mr Pascal said the development of Resorts World does not influence the timeline for his partnership’s development. INTERNATIONAL BRIEFS Bwin.Party Sells World Poker Tour Unit to China’s Ourgame Bwin.party, the online gambling group locked in talks over a $1.5 billion sale, is offloading its poker events business to a Chinese social gaming company, reports the Financial Times . The sale of the World Poker Tour unit, which runs televised poker tournaments, to Hong Kong-listed Ourgame Holdings for $35m in cash comes despite ongoing discussions with bidders for the sale of the group. World Poker Tour, which runs 70 tournaments each year with cash prizes in the millions of dollars, was previously listed on Nasdaq before being taken private in 2009 for $12.3 million by PartyGaming, the business that later merged with Bwin. Bwin.party said the sale of the unit, which is largely used as a user acquisition tool and contributed €10.4m in revenues last year, would not affect discussions with potential bidders.