Paradise going down the drain?
 

Looking at pokersitescout, I see that Paradise Poker seems to be the one of the the bigger sites having most problems with the gambling bill.
Their playerbase is steadily dropping, it is already under 500. So it looks like not long before they'll be gone from the market.
Am I missing something important?

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

The majority of Paradise traffic was from the US... Paradise initially cut off US players from depositing, and just this week finally stopped all real money play from US players... this is why traffic steadily dropped off into this week.

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

I looked in my Paradise account just now and saw OMG $5000.10 dollars total!

then I realize that $5000 of that is bonus [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

hehe.. yeah they dumped rediculously sized bonus amounts into player accounts a couple of weeks ago to keep people playing [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

While making it twice as hard to clear those damn bonuses. Die Paradise die!

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

[ QUOTE ]
While making it twice as hard to clear those damn bonuses. Die Paradise die!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, that too... some poker sites are sure doing some dumb things, eh?

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

Serves them right for being pussies and folding to the US govt. Why couldn't they have "sold" Paradise like they did with their sportsbooks?

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

Paradise should be a case study in business school on how a company can go from #1 in the industry to out of business in a few short years by not listening to their customers, and not keeping up with their industy and technology.

Bye-Bye

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

see also Planet.

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I looked in my Paradise account just now and saw OMG $5000.10 dollars total!

then I realize that $5000 of that is bonus [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Got you beat [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] $5000.19!

Even WSEX is ranked higher now.

ToT

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

I wonder how their mother company Sportingbet will handle this financially.

* They recently had to pay 33,3 million dollars in cash to the former Paradise owners (lol, success fee pre US ban).

* They will incur costs (writedowns) at £210 million due to the US legislation, but Paradise will still be valued at 63 million pounds in the Sportingbet books.

* They have just lost their chairman and director.


I think Sportinbet/Paradise is out of business in a few months. There are no pieces to pick up.

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Paradise should be a case study in business school on how a company can go from #1 in the industry to out of business in a few short years by not listening to their customers, and not keeping up with their industy and technology.

Bye-Bye

[/ QUOTE ]

QFT.

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

I just remembered I had $$ on there and cashed out...played there many years....sad new bonus...I think Paradise missed a big opportunity... idiots!

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I wonder how their mother company Sportingbet will handle this financially.

I think Sportinbet/Paradise is out of business in a few months. There are no pieces to pick up.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sportingbet still owns in non-US sports betting business...

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

Damn, just when I finally qualify for the million dollar freerole. What's the chance that 'Dise will be around til late January?

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

[ QUOTE ]

Sportingbet still owns in non-US sports betting business...

[/ QUOTE ]

I know that, but if you look at the numbers that the company has presented the market, you will see what I mean. Of their Net Assets at 378.3 million pounds, goodwill was 351.6 million. They are making a write down at 210 million. and will still have goodwill valued at 151.6 million pounds. Paradise is still valued at 63 million pounds, and if they keep losing players, they have to write down this value too. The rest of the goodwill at 88.6 million is the value of the sports betting and sportingbet poker. The question is if the results from these operations are good enough to justify this goodwill. If you look at their results in the year ended in July 2006 excluded American business, they lost money. Add in the fact that they now in November had to pay 33.3 million dollars in cash to the former Paradise owners and they are losing money at the moment, it is obvious that they will have a shortage of cash during the quarter (they had net cash at 35.2 million pounds pr. 13th of October).

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

I played almost entirely there, until last month. It's a ghost-town now.

Yes, just like planet poker. Sad.

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

Villa, just because a company is not worth, what it was worth before... doesn't mean it's going out of business...

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

That is something I know very well.

Believe me, I have seen this story a lot of times, and I have written a lot of articles about similar situations. Companies that have too large goodwill posts in their accounts compared with the real asset value end up either as busto or get bought out for small amounts.

When I predict big trouble for Sportingbet, I am not talking about their equity value that is around 200 million pounds and way too high. I am talking about their last financial report that shows that they have lost their ability to make money. Combine that with

* Low net cash
* Still very high goodwill
* They must pay 33.3 million dollars in cash to the old Paradise owners


then you have a company that have to get access to cash as soon as possible. Borrowing from banks will be very tough when there are no values to take as collateral (remember almost all values are goodwill, as you can see in their last report).

It is how to finance the short term for Sportingbet that is a problem.

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

Got this in a email from ghosttown paradise....

[ QUOTE ]
Dear Aussie

You have $5,064.00 remaining in your PayDay bonus account.

You only have a few days left to cash in on your Paradise Payday bonus! At 23:59 on Saturday, December 2nd your PayDay bonus will be removed from your Pending Bonus account

[/ QUOTE ]

Now to be clear, the $64 was a pending bonus that was NOT part of the payday promo and apparently is supposed to be left there even when they take the stupid "heres 5K you wont clear" bonus away at end of the 30 days.

But this email seems to suggest that they might get sneaky and take away ANY pending bonus once they yank the payday bonus.......another nail in the coffin me thinks [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

Paradise slit it's own throat.

i\'m still waiting for a response, has it been 20 minutes yet
 

Thank you for your email. Your inquiry has been received by our Customer Support Team.

A member of our highly trained support team will be in contact with you as soon as possible; please do not re-submit your inquiry. The typical response time is between 10 and 20 minutes, however, response times may vary slightly depending on the nature of your inquiry.

For queries relating to recent changes in US Gambling Law, please click here.

Should you wish to provide further information regarding the email you have sent please do so by replying directly to this email and NOT by starting a new email. Replying directly to this email will ensure the fastest response.
For your convenience we have also included a number of tips and the answers to many commonly asked questions in our easy to use Help Menu. You can launch the Help Menu from the Lobby area or by pressing F1 while running the Paradise software.

Best regards,


Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 3:46 PM
Subject: How much will YOUR Payday be this month?

hello
i still had bonus pending unearned
that paid out $10 per 100 points
do i still get this in addition to ths new bonus

i don't think i should lose my pending bonus
as it hasn't expired

ty

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

paradise will be a site from the past within 6 months, guaranteed.

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

[ QUOTE ]
paradise will be a site from the past within 6 weeks, guaranteed.

[/ QUOTE ]

FYP

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

I read in the cardrunners forum, that there is a very high chance that Paradise will re-open for USA players in the beginning of the next year (Greenplastic mentioned something like that about Paradise in one of his videos).

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I read in the cardrunners forum, that there is a very high chance that Paradise will re-open for USA players in the beginning of the next year (Greenplastic mentioned something like that about Paradise in one of his videos).

[/ QUOTE ]
Link?

Could be a contract problem here. I'd be pretty unhappy if I bought SportingBet's U.S. business only to have them reopen in competition with me. I would be looking to sue SportingBet and if I couldn't I'd kill the lawyers who reviewed the sales contract.

Re: Paradise going down the drain?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
paradise will be a site from the past within 6 weeks, guaranteed.

[/ QUOTE ]

FYP

[/ QUOTE ]

has anyone played at Paradise over the last few days?

true, lots of ho's cos of the reduced payday clearance rates but EVERY table i sat at had the usual 4/5 donktastic fish at it too.

im wondering how many of you that are predicting their demise are americans who can no longer play there?

remember Empire when Party pulled the plug? it was one of the fishiest sites going for that little while.

Re: Paradise going down the drain?