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Party Poker
bwin – known as betandwin from its founding until 2006 – began life
with 12 employees in 1997. The company launched its first online gambling site
just one year after the company was founded, focusing on the growing sports
betting market. One of the most important developments in the history of the
company was the launch of its live bet product, developed in house, allowing
players to place bet on sporting events while the actual event is taking place.
The firm's initial public offering at the Austrian Stock Exchange took place
in March 2000. In June 2001, betandwin acquired Simon Bold (Gibraltar), which
is now known as bwin International Ltd., essentially moving its operations to
Gibraltar. The move was made to follow some of the company’s biggest rivals
to the country. By December 2001, betandwin was ready to step into the online
casinogaming market and did so by launching its first casino platform. Two years
later, in July 2003, betandwin introduced and launched a soft games platform
known as Balls of Fire. In November 2004, betandwin launched multiplayer poker.
The group acquired betoto.com to expand its presence in the Greek market in
June 2005, a company which offers a fixed-odds betting service to punters around
the globe. December of the same year marked another major acquisition –
Ongame e-Solutions AB was taken over. This acquisition was a move consistent
with the group’s strategy to expand into the poker market, after the takeover
Ongame e-Solutions changed its name to bwin Games. Still in 2005 betandwin acquired
global media rights outside of Germany to the German Football League. In August
2006 betandwin launched the new bwin brand. This was done after it was found
that the betandwin brand, which was described as “descriptive, high-grade
and functional”, was not suited anymore for the wide assortment of entertainment
offerings covered by the company, including sports betting, poker, soft games,
and casino games. In 2007, bwin began to offer live streaming of major sports
events.
In September 2009, bwin announced the acquisition of Italian poker operator
Gioco Digitale, marking the company's entry into the Italian online gambling
market.[5][6]
Sports betting
Sports bets are the core business at bwin. Today, the sports betting line-up
includes more than 90 different sports; the core area of customer interest is
soccer. Other sports include all popular ball-related sports, US sports as well
as all major winter sports and motorsports ranging from Formula 1 to MotoGP.
“Exotic” sports such as Roller Hockey, Futsal and Darts are also
included in the daily line-up. Not only sports are on offer in the betting line-up.
Customers will find odds on a range of events outside the area of sports. These
include bets on politics and entertainment such as the Oscars, Talent Shows,
the Eurovision Song Contest and "Miss” events.[7]
Poker
The following types of games are offered at bwin Poker: Texas Hold’em,
Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo and Five-card draw,
plus house variations like Double (three hole cards, choose two , halfway between
Hold'em and Omaha). In terms of stakes, users can choose between Fixed Limit,
Pot Limit or No Limit tables. A “play money” version of the games
is also available for users to try out for free. bwin offers poker tournaments,
both, Sit & Go and scheduled, and cash games (ring games). Sit & Go
tournaments begin as soon as the table is completely occupied. Scheduled tournaments
begin at a specified time and allow for higher numbers of participants and the
highest prize pools. In cash games the players can join and leave whenever they
want. bwin Poker can be played using the Mac OS X Poker Client, the Windows
Poker Client, the Java Poker Client or the Mobile Poker Client. The Mac and
Windows version offers an extensive selection of features such as statistics
and a mini-table function. The Java client is platform independent as it is
a browser based solution. The mobile client allows customers to play cash games
on their mobile phones.[8]
PokerRoom.com
PokerRoom.com was an online poker cardroom founded in 1999. Licensed by the
Kahnawake Gaming Commission, PokerRoom offered both play and real money formats.
Tournaments and ring games were available in both web-browser and download client
platforms, with support for both Macintosh and Linux. PokerRoom was one of the
first online poker sites to provide multi-language support, and catered to Danish,
German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, and Swedish speakers. These languages
were accessed via "regional sites," many of them showing local sponsoring
for the selected region. After 10 years of operation, bwin announced the closure
of PokerRoom.com on April 14, 2009. Players with money still left in their accounts
were encouraged to transfer their balance and play at bwin.com.[9] However,
PokerRoom.com players with large "play money" accounts had to abandon
those accounts when transferring to bwin.com.
Casino games
bwin offers its customers more than 80 games, ranging from classics such as
roulette or blackjack to slot machines and casino tournaments. The casino has
a longstanding tradition at bwin: In 2001, it was introduced as a second product,
in addition to sports betting.[10]
Soft games
bwin offers more than 60 games divided into the categories of Fortune Games,
Skill Games, Mini Games and “ParaDice”, as well as Backgammon. This
is the product group with the biggest potential for innovation and expansion
on the market.[11]
Legal Status
The global legal framework for Internet gambling is a complicated mix of laws
and regulations, bwin's situation varies therefore depending on the country
concerned. For several years now, the United Kingdom and Italy have been examples
of countries that have regulated their online gaming markets to the advantage
of all stakeholders. Just recently, Italy extended its online licences to include
poker tournaments, and countries like France, Spain and Denmark announced their
intention of permitting private operators access to their markets under stringent
conditions and controls. Other countries, on the other hand, are still pursuing
a policy of maintaining a state monopoly of internet gaming, or even a complete
ban.
On the 15 September 2006, Norbert Teufelberger and Manfred Bodner were arrested[12]
at a press conference in La Turbie, France, due to offenses against the French
gambling laws. After an investigation the judge released them on the evening
of September 18, 2006.
Party Gaming
PartyGaming was founded in 1997[13] as a network of gambling sites operated
by Ruth Parasol in the Caribbean. The network eventually operated under an umbrella
company called iGlobalMedia, which then changed its name to PartyGaming. PartyGaming's
flagship site, PartyPoker.com, was launched in 2001.[13] Its primary shareholders
were Parasol, Group Operations Director Anurag Dikshit, Marketing Director Vikrant
Bhargava (who joined the company in 1998 and 1999, respectively), and Russ DeLeon
(Parasol's husband, Harvard attorney and serial entrepreneur).
In the 1990s, Las Vegas consultant and actuary Michael Shackleford ran a computer
trial of the first blackjack and roulette games offered by the Company. Shackleford
stated that the "results clearly showed they (the games) weren't fair".
Ruth Parasol's spokesman Jon Mendelsohn acknowledged that the chances had "tipped
too much toward the house", but attributed the problems to "software
flaws", not rigging. It led to the development of their own proprietary
software rather than using external platforms.[14]
The IPO
The foursome sold over 23% of their combined shares to take the company public
on the London Stock Exchange in June 2005.[15] The initial offer price of 116p
valued the company at £4.64 billion[13] ($8.46 billion). Within a month
the share price rose to make the value of the company exceed twelve billion
dollars. In early September 2005 a cautious statement about future growth prospects
saw the shares fall by a third in a day, but the same week the company was promoted
to the FTSE 100 Index. By the end of November 2005 the stock had regained its
original IPO value. During the IPO, no new shares of PartyGaming were issued,
and the company did not receive any additional capital as a result. Rather,
shares merely changed hands with the four shareholders transferring some of
their shares to investors.
Post IPO
Dikshit and Bhargava stepped down from the company's board in May 2006. Dikshit
announced that he would remain with the company as the Chief Operating Officer;
Bhargava would continue as an advisor and shareholder of the company while pursuing
other business interests.[16]
In February 2006 PartyGaming introduced a new integrated platform,[13] enabling
multiple games to be played without requiring customers to log in each time
and deposit funds in separate accounts. An online backgammon site, PartyGammon.com,
was launched in mid-2006.[13] In August 2006 PartyGaming acquired Antigua and
Barbuda registered sports betting operator Gamebookers which focuses on the
European market.[17]
U.S. legislation
On September 29, 2006, the U.S. Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling
Enforcement Act of 2006.
On October 2, 2006, PartyGaming announced that it would "suspend all real
money gaming business with US customers" in light of the passage of the
Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.[18] George W. Bush signed
the act into law on October 13, and PartyGaming suspended offerings of real-money
games to U.S. players. Free play games and non-US customers were not affected.[19]
As a result of this news being released to investors, PartyGaming's publicly
traded stock dropped almost 60% in 24 hours. The company was moved from the
FTSE 100 to the FTSE 250 Index on October 11.[20]
In April 2009 the company made a settlement with the United States government
where they agreed to pay a penalty of $105 million over the next four years
as part of a “non-prosecution agreement”. As part of the deal, Party
put its name to a “statement of facts” in which it admits for the
first time that, before October 2006, it had targeted US citizens, resulting
in the processing of transactions that were “contrary to certain US laws”.[21]
French legislation
In June 2010, Party Gaming obtained its first agreement on recently regulated
French market. This agreement is given for the online betting activity of the
websites partybets.fr and gamebookers.fr.[22] In the same time, Party Gaming
obtained the online poker French licence for partypoker.fr, acfpoker.fr and
luckyjeux.fr.
PartyPoker.com
PartyPoker.com
PartyPoker.com was launched in 2001 and has since grown to be one of the largest
online poker card rooms. The site is endorsed by Mike Sexton, the host of the
World Poker Tour television show. The domain partypoker.com attracted at least
3.6 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.[23]
The site offers various forms of Texas Hold'em, Omaha and Stud poker.
Split with "skin" partners
In its early days, PartyGaming entered into several marketing partnerships that
allowed companies such as Empire Online, who ran Empire Poker, to share in a
common pool of poker players. Players could access the PartyGaming network either
through the PartyPoker.com software itself or through the software of one of
PartyGaming's "skin" partners.
In mid-2005, PartyGaming made various moves to ringfence its own players from
those of the "skin" partners. The company began to explore mergers,
buyouts, and other options. In October of that year, PartyGaming launched an
upgraded PartyPoker.com software system that cut off the "skin" partners
from the main pool of players, and left the "skin" players on the
old system.
In November 2005, offer discussions with Empire Online were terminated, and
in December Empire Online confirmed that it had started legal proceedings against
PartyGaming in the High Court of Gibraltar. In February 2006 the two companies
announced a US$250 million settlement deal; PartyGaming agreed to acquire Empire's
"skin" operations, and Empire dropped the suit.[24] In December 2006,
PartyGaming announced the acquisition of the remaining assets of Empire Online.[25]
PartyGaming also acquired the operations of former "skin" partners
IntertopsPoker and MultiPoker, in separate private transactions for undisclosed
amounts.
World Poker Tour
In November 2009, PartyGaming announced its acquisition of the World Poker Tour
from WPTE.[26]
Sponsorship
bwin currently sponsor football giant Real Madrid. In October 2010 bwin announced
a sponsorship for the upcoming three football seasons in which they will be
the title sponsor of the Portuguese League Cup - in future named "bwin
Cup".[27] Italy's second tier Serie B has already been re-branded "Serie
bwin" after a two-year sponsorship deal was signed in July 2010. Besides,
bwin cooperates with the International Basketball Association (FIBA) and has
been sponsoring the European and World Basketball Championships since 2006.
In the area of motorsport, the company is one of the main sponsors of the MotoGP
series. In 2010, bwin is the title sponsor of the races in Jerez and Estoril
and official partner of the GP in Brno, Misano, Mugello. In the past, many other
top events in the international and local sports world were supported by the
corporation. bwin also lent its name to the Portuguese first football league
(bwinLIGA), was sponsor of AC Milan and has been partner to famous clubs such
as Juventus Turin and Werder Bremen.[28]
In addition, bwin organizes numerous poker events both online and offline. One
of the biggest regular online tournaments is the ChampionChip. Special poker
tournaments like the Weekly Country Showdown or the bwin Dailies offer a huge
range of tournaments adjust to country specifics and buy-in levels. Periodically
there are launched new types and variations of Sit & Go’s. Via several
online qualifiers the bwin user can qualify for offline events like the World
Series of Poker (WSOP), the Aussie Millions and events on the World Poker Tour.
For “poker newbies” bwin offers a special route, the Rookie Challenge.
There a new poker player has the chance to climb up several stages for free
to earn real money tickets.
The company have faced some opposition in Europe over sponsorship of sports,
especially football. In 2006 Bremen banned its top football team, Sportverein
Werder Bremen, from carrying the bwin logo on its shirts.[29]