Austrian gaming organisation Bwin’s recent acquisition of Italian poker giant Gioco Digitale is expected to extend its corporation greatly. There are a number of ways that this will be done. Gioco Digitale is the biggest online poker and casino gaming operator in Italy, so clearly Bwin has taken on an extremely large corporate opportunity.
The Italian poker market is currently growing at an alarming rate, which means that Bwin’s recent acquisition is a very aptly timed one. The fifty million Euros that is has cost Bwin to acquire Gioco Digitale is likely to be made back up very quickly, with the rate at which the industry is growing. Italian poker is already a large market, and the publicity surrounding this deal is likely to mean that it becomes an even bigger one in the following months and years.
Bwin is planning on using its new company, which will keep its name and be run by the same team of entrepreneurs and staff as it is currently, to expand the online poker market further into the rest of Europe. They have not yet revealed the details of how this will be done, since the financial aspects of the deal have only just been finalised. However, in the press release detailing the acquisition it was suggested that ‘poker and other products’ would be used. This could confirm the idea that Bwin will now extend Gioco Digitale out of simply the online poker industry, and introduce new aspects of gambling to the organisation.
The move has placed Bwin at the top of the league in terms of online poker, lotteries and sports betting in continental Europe. There are now no other organisations that can rival the amount of influence or revenue that it will soon have in the gambling market in continental and western Europe. It is also expected that the move will help Bwin extend further into Europe from its base in Vienna, as it has now such a large part of its business dealings being carried out in Italy. Bwin has expressed a wish to extend its business into Europe in the past, and the acquisition of Gioco Digitale is clearly its first foray into doing so.

Wed, Sep 16, 2009
0 Comments