Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment
Encyclopedia
bwin.Party Digital Entertainment Plc is an online gambling
company, formed by the March 2011 merger of PartyGaming plc and bwin. The world's largest publicly traded online gambling firm, it is best known for its online poker
room PartyPoker.com and its sports betting
brand Bwin. It is headquartered in Gibraltar
and quoted on the London Stock Exchange
. PartyGaming Plc was founded in 1997 with the launch of Starluck Casino. Prior to passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006
by the U.S. Congress
, PartyGaming was the world's largest online poker brand (based on cash game
revenue and number of players). Its market share has diminished since then but it remains the second largest online poker room in the world.
The new company became the world's largest publicly traded online gaming firm, 48.4% owned by existing PartyGaming shareholders and 51.6% by bwin shareholders. The merged company is listed on the London Stock Exchange
, with joint CEO's Norbert Teufelberger and Jim Ryan.
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 casino
gaming 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.
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. In order to boost bwin's presence in the UK football betting market, the company launched bwinbetting.com, a football betting resource, in 2011. 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 Show
s, the Eurovision Song Contest
and "Miss” events
.
: 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.
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 game
s 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. However, PokerRoom.com players with large "play money" accounts had to abandon those accounts when transferring to bwin.com.
or blackjack
to slot machine
s 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.
. This is the product group with the biggest potential for innovation and expansion on the market.
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 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.
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. 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.
in June 2005. The initial offer price of 116p valued the company at £4.64 billion ($
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.
In February 2006 PartyGaming introduced a new integrated platform, 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. In August 2006 PartyGaming acquired Antigua and Barbuda
registered sports betting operator Gamebookers which focuses on the European market.
.
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. 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.
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.
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”.
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. The site offers various forms of Texas Hold'em, Omaha and Stud poker.
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. In December 2006, PartyGaming announced the acquisition of the remaining assets of Empire Online.
PartyGaming also acquired the operations of former "skin" partners IntertopsPoker and MultiPoker, in separate private transactions for undisclosed amounts.
from WPTE.
- in future named "bwin Cup". 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.
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
, with the results reported at the official bwin Poker Blog. 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.
Online gambling
Online gambling, also known as Internet gambling and iGambling, is a general term for gambling using the Internet.-Online poker:Online poker tables commonly offer Texas hold 'em, Omaha, Seven-card stud, razz, HORSE and other game types in both tournament and ring game structures...
company, formed by the March 2011 merger of PartyGaming plc and bwin. The world's largest publicly traded online gambling firm, it is best known for its online poker
Online poker
Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of poker players worldwide...
room PartyPoker.com and its sports betting
Sports betting
Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome.-United States of America:Aside from simple wagers such as betting a friend that one's favorite baseball team will win its division or buying a football "square" for the Super Bowl, sports betting is...
brand Bwin. It is headquartered in Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
and quoted on the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
. PartyGaming Plc was founded in 1997 with the launch of Starluck Casino. Prior to passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006
Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006
The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 is United States legislation regulating online gambling. It was added as Title VIII to the SAFE Port Act which otherwise regulated port security...
by the U.S. Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
, PartyGaming was the world's largest online poker brand (based on cash game
Cash game
Cash games, also sometimes referred to as ring games or live action games, are poker games played with "real" chips and money at stake, usually with no predetermined end time, with players able to enter and leave as they see fit...
revenue and number of players). Its market share has diminished since then but it remains the second largest online poker room in the world.
The new company became the world's largest publicly traded online gaming firm, 48.4% owned by existing PartyGaming shareholders and 51.6% by bwin shareholders. The merged company is listed on the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
, with joint CEO's Norbert Teufelberger and Jim Ryan.
bwin
bwin – known as betandwin from its founding until 2006 – began life with 12 employees in 1997. The company launched its first online gamblingOnline gambling
Online gambling, also known as Internet gambling and iGambling, is a general term for gambling using the Internet.-Online poker:Online poker tables commonly offer Texas hold 'em, Omaha, Seven-card stud, razz, HORSE and other game types in both tournament and ring game structures...
site just one year after the company was founded, focusing on the growing sports betting
Sports betting
Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome.-United States of America:Aside from simple wagers such as betting a friend that one's favorite baseball team will win its division or buying a football "square" for the Super Bowl, sports betting is...
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
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
at the Austrian Stock Exchange took place in March 2000. In June 2001, betandwin acquired Simon Bold (Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
), 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 casino
Online casino
Online casinos, also known as virtual casinos or Internet casinos, are online versions of traditional casinos. Online casinos enable gamblers to play and wager on casino games through the Internet....
gaming 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
Poker
Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern 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
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
to the German Football League
German Football League
The German Football League is the elite league for American football in Germany. Playing rules are based on those of the American NCAA....
. 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
Sports betting
Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome.-United States of America:Aside from simple wagers such as betting a friend that one's favorite baseball team will win its division or buying a football "square" for the Super Bowl, sports betting is...
, poker
Poker
Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern 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
Mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...
of Italian poker operator Gioco Digitale, marking the company's entry into the Italian online gambling market.
Sports betting
Sports betsSports betting
Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome.-United States of America:Aside from simple wagers such as betting a friend that one's favorite baseball team will win its division or buying a football "square" for the Super Bowl, sports betting is...
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. In order to boost bwin's presence in the UK football betting market, the company launched bwinbetting.com, a football betting resource, in 2011. 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
Roller hockey
Roller Hockey is a form of hockey played on a dry surface using skates with wheels. The term "Roller Hockey" is often used interchangeably to refer to two variant forms chiefly differentiated by the type of skate used. There is traditional "Roller Hockey," played with quad roller skates, and...
, Futsal
Futsal
Futsal is a variant of association football that is played on a smaller pitch and mainly played indoors. Its name is a portmanteau of the Portuguese futebol de salão and the Spanish fútbol de salón , which can be translated as "hall football" or "indoor football"...
and Darts
Darts
Darts is a form of throwing game where darts are thrown at a circular target fixed to a wall. Though various boards and games have been used in the past, the term "darts" usually now refers to a standardised game involving a specific board design and set of rules...
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 Show
Talent show
A talent show is an event where participants perform their talent or talents of acting, singing, dancing, acrobatics, drumming, martial arts, playing an instrument, and other activities to showcase a unique form of talent, sometimes for a reward, trophy or prize...
s, the Eurovision Song Contest
Eurovision Song Contest
The Eurovision Song Contest is an annual competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union .Each member country submits a song to be performed on live television and then casts votes for the other countries' songs to determine the most popular song in the competition...
and "Miss” events
Beauty contest
A beauty pageant or beauty contest, is a competition that mainly focuses on the physical beauty of its contestants, although such contests often incorporate personality, talent, and answers to judges' questions as judged criteria...
.
Poker
The following types of games are offered at bwin PokerPoker
Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern poker...
: Texas Hold’em, Omaha
Omaha hold 'em
Omaha hold 'em is a community card poker game similar to Texas hold 'em, where each player is dealt four cards and must make his best hand using exactly two of them, plus exactly three of the five community cards...
, Omaha Hi/Lo, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo and Five-card draw
Five-card draw
Five-card draw is a poker variant that is the simplest and often the first variant learned by most players. It is common in home games but rare in casino and tournament play...
, 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
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
Poker Client, the Windows Poker Client, the Java
Java
Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west 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
Browser
To browse or a browser may, among other concepts, refer to:*Browse, , a kind of orienting strategy in animals and human beings*Browsing , a type of herbivory*A user interface on a computer that allows navigation of objects...
based solution. The mobile client allows customers to play cash games on their mobile phones.
PokerRoom.com
PokerRoom.com was an online poker
Online poker
Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of poker players worldwide...
cardroom founded in 1999. Licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission
Kahnawake Gaming Commission
The Kahnawake Gaming Commission is a gaming regulatory body that licenses and regulates a large number of online casinos, online poker rooms and online sportsbook sites, as well as three land-based poker rooms that are situated within the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake.The Commission was first...
, PokerRoom offered both play and real money formats. Tournaments
Poker tournament
A poker tournament is a tournament where players compete by playing poker. It can feature as few as two players playing on a single table , and as many as tens of thousands of players playing on thousands of tables...
and ring game
Ring game
Ring game may refer to:*Ring game , a general class of multi-player pocket billiards gambling games*Ring game, a.k.a. cash game, a poker game played with "real" chips and each player's own money at stake, as opposed to a poker tournament with a prize money pool...
s were available in both web-browser and download client platforms, with support for both Macintosh and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
. 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. 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 rouletteRoulette
Roulette is a casino game named after a French diminutive for little wheel. In the game, players may choose to place bets on either a single number or a range of numbers, the colors red or black, or whether the number is odd or even....
or blackjack
Blackjack
Blackjack, also known as Twenty-one or Vingt-et-un , is the most widely played casino banking game in the world...
to slot machine
Slot machine
A slot machine , informally fruit machine , the slots , poker machine or "pokies" or simply slot is a casino gambling machine with three or more reels which spin when a button is pushed...
s 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.
Soft games
bwin offers more than 60 games divided into the categories of Fortune Games, Skill Games, Mini Games and “ParaDice”, as well as BackgammonBackgammon
Backgammon is one of the oldest board games for two players. The playing pieces are moved according to the roll of dice, and players win by removing all of their pieces from the board. There are many variants of backgammon, most of which share common traits...
. This is the product group with the biggest potential for innovation and expansion on the market.
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, ItalyItaly
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
extended its online licences to include poker tournaments, and countries like France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. 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
Government monopoly
In economics, a government monopoly is a form of coercive monopoly in which a government agency or government corporation is the sole provider of a particular good or service and competition is prohibited by law...
of internet gaming, or even a complete ban.
On the 15 September 2006, Norbert Teufelberger and Manfred Bodner were arrested at a press conference in La Turbie
La Turbie
La Turbie is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France.-History:...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan 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 as a network of gambling sites operated by Ruth ParasolRuth Parasol
Ruth Parasol founded PartyGaming in 1997, the parent company of online poker site PartyPoker.com, which floated on the London Stock Exchange in June 2005. In 2006, Parasol was ranked #197 on Forbes' 400 Richest Americans. Subsequently in 2007, she dropped off the Forbes' 400 Richest Americans...
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. Its primary shareholders were Parasol, Group Operations Director Anurag Dikshit
Anurag Dikshit
Anurag Dikshit , is an Indian businessman and philanthropist. Previously the richest man in Gibraltar and the 701st richest man in the world Anurag has given away the vast majority of his wealth through his charitable organisation The Kusuma Trust...
, Marketing Director Vikrant Bhargava
Vikrant Bhargava
Vikrant Bhargava is an entrepreneur of Indian origin, based in Gibraltar and the former Group Marketing Director of online casino operator PartyGaming...
(who joined the company in 1998 and 1999, respectively), and Russ DeLeon
Russ DeLeon
Russ DeLeon pioneered PartyGaming with his wife Ruth Parasol.Born in 1965 in Sacramento, California, DeLeon received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987. He then worked on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. for his local congressman the late...
(Parasol's husband, Harvard attorney and serial entrepreneur).
In the 1990s, Las Vegas consultant and actuary Michael Shackleford
Michael Shackleford
Michael "The Wizard of Odds" Shackleford a trained actuary , now makes his living analyzing casino games...
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.
The IPO
The foursome sold over 23% of their combined shares to take the company public on the London Stock ExchangeLondon Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
in June 2005. The initial offer price of 116p valued the company at £4.64 billion ($
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
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.In February 2006 PartyGaming introduced a new integrated platform, enabling multiple games to be played without requiring customers to log in each time and deposit funds in separate accounts. An online backgammon
Backgammon
Backgammon is one of the oldest board games for two players. The playing pieces are moved according to the roll of dice, and players win by removing all of their pieces from the board. There are many variants of backgammon, most of which share common traits...
site, PartyGammon.com, was launched in mid-2006. In August 2006 PartyGaming acquired Antigua and Barbuda
Antigua and Barbuda
Antigua and Barbuda is a twin-island nation lying between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It consists of two major inhabited islands, Antigua and Barbuda, and a number of smaller islands...
registered sports betting operator Gamebookers which focuses on the European market.
U.S. legislation
On September 29, 2006, the U.S. Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006
The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 is United States legislation regulating online gambling. It was added as Title VIII to the SAFE Port Act which otherwise regulated port security...
.
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. 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.
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
FTSE 250 Index
The FTSE 250 Index is a capitalisation-weighted index consisting of the 101st to the 350th largest companies on the London Stock Exchange. Promotions to and demotions from the index take place quarterly in March, June, September and December...
on October 11.
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”.
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. In the same time, Party Gaming obtained the online poker French licence for partypoker.fr, acfpoker.fr and luckyjeux.fr.PartyPoker.com
Online poker
Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of poker players worldwide...
card rooms. The site is endorsed by Mike Sexton
Mike Sexton
Michael Richard Sexton is an American professional poker player and commentator. He is a member of the Poker Hall of Fame.-Early years:...
, the host of the World Poker Tour
World Poker Tour
The World Poker Tour is a series of international poker tournaments and associated television series broadcasting the final table of each tournament. It was started in the United States by attorney/television producer Steven Lipscomb, who served as CEO of WPT Enterprises , the firm that...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
show. The domain partypoker.com attracted at least 3.6 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com
Compete.com
Compete.com is a web traffic analysis service of Compete, Inc. which operates in the United States and publishes the approximate number of global visitors to the top 1,000,000 web sites in the world...
study. 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
Empire Online
Livermore Investment Group is an investment company established by Arnon Katz and Noam Lanir traded on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol . Formerly known as Empire Online, the company was created in 2002...
, 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. In December 2006, PartyGaming announced the acquisition of the remaining assets of Empire Online.
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 TourWorld Poker Tour
The World Poker Tour is a series of international poker tournaments and associated television series broadcasting the final table of each tournament. It was started in the United States by attorney/television producer Steven Lipscomb, who served as CEO of WPT Enterprises , the firm that...
from WPTE.
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 CupPortuguese League Cup
The Taça da Liga , officially known as bwin Cup, is a competition organized by the Portuguese League for Professional Football started in the 2007–08 football season. For the first three seasons it was known as Carlsberg Cup for sponsorship reasons...
- in future named "bwin Cup". Italy's second tier Serie B
Serie B
Serie B, currently named Serie bwin due to sponsorship reasons, is the second-highest division in the Italian football league system after the Serie A. It is contested by 22 teams and organized by the Lega Serie B since July 2010, after the split of Lega Calcio that previously took care of both the...
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
International Basketball Association
The International Basketball Association was founded by Alexandria, Minnesota entrepreneur Thomas Anderson in 1995. Anderson traveled the Upper Midwest searching for franchise owners for a couple of years before the league began play with five teams in the 1995-1996 season...
(FIBA) and has been sponsoring the European and World Basketball Championships since 2006. In the area of motorsport
Motorsport
Motorsport or motorsports is the group of sports which primarily involve the use of motorized vehicles, whether for racing or non-racing competition...
, the company is one of the main sponsors of the MotoGP series. In 2010, bwin is the title sponsor of the races in Jerez
Spanish Grand Prix
The Spanish Grand Prix is a Formula One race currently held at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, as part of the annual Formula One championship season.-History:...
and Estoril
Portuguese Grand Prix
The Portuguese Grand Prix was a motorsports event held for several years, mostly in the 1950s and then in the 1980s and 90s. It was a Formula One race between and and between and ....
and official partner of the GP in Brno
Czech Republic motorcycle Grand Prix
The Czech Republic motorcycle Grand Prix is a motorcycling event that is part of the Grand Prix motorcycle racing season. Before 1993, the race was known as the Czechoslovakian motorcycle Grand Prix...
, 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.
In addition, bwin organizes numerous poker events both online and offline. One of the biggest regular online tournaments is the ChampionChip
ChampionChip
ChampionChips are a brand name of one type of passive RFID transponders, marked with a unique identification number, used in active sports events, to keep track of the competition times of participants. It is one manufacturer's implementation of transponder timing.ChampionChip transponders are...
. 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)
World Series of Poker
The World Series of Poker is a world-renowned series of poker tournaments held annually in Las Vegas and, since 2005, sponsored by Harrah's Entertainment...
, the Aussie Millions and events on the World Poker Tour
World Poker Tour
The World Poker Tour is a series of international poker tournaments and associated television series broadcasting the final table of each tournament. It was started in the United States by attorney/television producer Steven Lipscomb, who served as CEO of WPT Enterprises , the firm that...
, with the results reported at the official bwin Poker Blog. 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
Bremen
The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany. A commercial and industrial city with a major port on the river Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area . Bremen is the second most populous city in North Germany and tenth in Germany.Bremen is...
banned its top football team, Sportverein Werder Bremen
SV Werder Bremen
SV Werder Bremen is a German sports club best known for its association football team playing in Bremen, in the northwest German federal state of the same name. The club was founded on 4 February 1899 as Fußballverein Werder by a group of sixteen vocational high school students who had won a prize...
, from carrying the bwin logo on its shirts.