Playtech may be considering acquisition bids for either Amaya Inc. or OpenBet—and possibly both—according to reports in UK newspapers
The Sunday Times reported that Playtech could make a bid to acquire PokerStars owner Amaya as part of its strategy to use £800m in available funds. The company declined to comment on the paper’s report.
The report came after a report in Britain’s The Telegraph newspaper that Playtech is interested in acquiring fellow provider OpenBet and is in competition with a William-Hill backed bid from NYX Gaming Group.
However, Warwick Bartlett, CEO of Global Betting and Gaming Consultants, told Gambling Insider he’s surprised by both reports.
“I would be surprised if Playtech acquired either OpenBet or Amaya,” he told the website. “Playtech has its own sports-betting software and has an integrated common-wallet strategy across all its products so there is a good chance they will pick up business over time when contracts elapse. I had thought that Playtech wanted to diversify out of i-gaming into financial services, which seemed logical given the consolidation in i-gaming.
“Amaya has halved in value since being acquired from the founders,” he said. “Poker is in decline, but Amaya has a huge database of gamblers that could be useful to Playtech. However, the switch from software provider to operator is no easy task when so much resource, time and effort is used to generate software products.”
Playtech had attempted to acquire trading platform Plus500 for an approximate £459.6 million and Forex broker Ava Trade for $105 million last year, but both deals fell through.
