September Industry News

The summer is over and with it the “dead season” of the gaming industry. August is a slow month for most businesses, online and offline. The only industry that tends to boom during the hot summer months is the tourism industry.

However, gaming companies and software providers continued to provide their services throughout the summer and many continued to release new games and offer exciting promotions for bored parents stranded at home with their kids.

In addition there were many interesting acquisitions and announcements from some of the biggest industry leaders that included:

Bwin
Bwin.Party and Amaury Group have merged their joint venture group SAjOO.fr into Bwin France in order to meet the regulatory challenges that operators face under the current regulatory climate in France. SAjOO.fr is estimated to have a market share of 9% of the total French online gambling market and this move will put it in a better position towards growth.

32Red
something good is happening at 32Red as the operator just announced record revenues for the first half of 2011. Total H1 revenues were more than €12.5 Million. That is an increase of 42% in year-on-year revenues. In response to the H1 results 32Red share prices have risen to a record high.

Betsson
A payment of €15 Million was made to Betsafe after it has met its agreed targets following the takeover from Betsson back in May. If Betsafe will continue to perform with the same success in the next few months it will be entitled to a last payment of €12.5 Million by the end of Q1 of 2012.

PokerStars
Following the events in the US that brought federal indictments against the founders of PokerStars, the seizure of its doc.com domains, and freezing of bank accounts, PokerStars stopped accepting US players and also scaled down the number of its US-based professional players. It has now parted ways with another three of its pros, a move that leaves only nine US professional poker players in the PokerStars 58 professional players team.