Exclusive interview with PartyGaming
4th August, 2009
Gaming Alerts were lucky enough to gain an exclusive interview with John Shepherd the Director of Corporate Communications at PartyGaming to talk about their recent acquisition of Cashcade
Gaming Alerts has recently partnered with Swiss Casino who are owned by PartyGaming and were lucky enough to have the chance to do an exclusive interview with John Shepherd, the Director of Corporate Communications at PartyGaming. After the recent acquisition of Cashcade, it seemed a perfect opportunity to interview PartyGaming to get a better insight into their reasons and choices to take a gamble.
Q1) It is rumoured that a lot of online bingo operators feel threatened with your purchase of Cashcade, with some smaller operators believing that it’s going to be even more of a struggle to compete with the big guys, what is your opinion on this?
Cashcade is a great example of how entrepreneurial spirit, smart thinking, strong brand names and brilliant marketing campaigns can turn a start-up venture into a market leader in just a few years. The much larger household bingo brand names of Gala Coral and Rank, for instance, have been overshadowed by Cashcade and there’s every reason to believe that there will be other small online bingo companies that climb the market share league in the coming years. The recent independent market forecasts by H2 Gambling Capital, which predicts that annual global online bingo revenue of $1.5bn today will climb steeply to $2.5bn by 2012, shows that there is plenty of opportunity for small players to grow.
Q2) There were rumours (and numerous articles) that were talking about you and 888 fighting it out to buy Cashcade. Was that the truth? was it just that you had deeper pockets and were happy to pay more or was there another reason why the sale went to Party?
I can’t speak for 888, but the opportunity to buy Cashcade, which has carved out a leading position in the UK market, made a great deal of business sense for PartyGaming. Not only have we acquired the market leader in the UK, but we have gained an industry-leading marketing team with proven expertise in bingo, led by Patrick Southon and Simon Collins.
Cashcade is a highly profitable business with significant potential and provides us with a platform for expansion into new markets. Another attractive element of the deal is that all of Cashcade’s main financial metrics have grown considerably in each of the last four years and it generates strong cashflow.
We believe that the acquisition of Cashcade puts us in a strong position to drive and capitalise on the anticipated global expansion of online bingo, a product which we are excited about and continue to believe has great potential.
Q3) What is going to happen with Party bingo – do you have plans to keep pushing that too?
Absolutely – but we’re keeping our plans under wraps and out of sight of the competition for the time being.
Q4) With the takeover of several large online bingo operators such as Foxy Bingo, what will the effects be for affiliates? Does this not mean that affiliates will lose out on their lifetime rev share as all the marketing/ affiliate management etc moves to a new company?
We have always understood and benefits that affiliates bring to online gaming. Over the years we have built up a network that runs to tens of thousands of affiliates, many of which have been helping to bring us players for several years.
The beauty of Cashcade is in fact that it is a standalone team of bingo experts. In fact, you’re going to see somewhat of a reverse integration where we’ll take our existing bingo team and integrate them into Cashcade’s.
Q5) And finally, what does PartyGaming see as the main benefit of this buy out? Do you think that it will benefit the online gaming industry (as a whole) and if so in what ways?
We’ve said for a few months now that the online gaming industry is ripe for consolidation. We have the aspiration and capacity for more M&A and see it as an important element of our overall strategy. Consolidation and innovation tend to go hand-in-hand, so there will be benefits for the industry and most importantly for the customer. Online gaming is a very fast-moving industry – so watch this space!
Other exclusive news to catch our reader’s attention is our new Twitter competition. Gaming Alerts has partnered with Ladbrokes to give away £100 every day this week! For terms and conditions please visit the competition page.
By Gina
