Party Poker for Sale?
 

Does this mean they've given up on the poker game?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8c50231a-7...0779fd2ac.html

[ QUOTE ]

PartyGaming, the UK-listed online poker firm, is open to approaches from Las Vegas-based casinos regarding a sale, said its chief executive officer Mitch Garber.

Speaking in a one-to-one interview at EIG 2007 i-Gaming conference, Garber said the Gibraltar-based group with a market cap of GBP 1.23bn (USD 2.5bn) would like to hear from the major players in Las Vegas. Garber refused to comment as to whether the company was already in talks with a particular casino and remained tight-lipped as to potential main suitors.

Previously reported rumours mentioned 888.com as a possible buyer. An 888 source refused to comment.

An analyst said casinos such as The Mirage and The Bellagio could be interested. ”Online gaming is currently prohibited in the US. However PartyGaming is listed in the UK where EU legislation allows online gaming. It gives the casinos direct online access to the UK market,” the analyst said. When asked about the two casinos, a PartyGaming source said they were interested in holding talks with them.

PartyGaming’s share price today was 31.50p.

The company’s website says its shareholders include Deutsche Bank with 3.7%, Orbis Investment Management with 4.9% and Prudential with 3%.


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Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

This would be awesome if the Bellagio or some american company bought PP.

I think a Bellagio owned PP would have a 10x better chance of having poker 100% legalized, with legit neteller alternatives etc.(yes I know it's legal everywhere but washington state but you know what I mean)

GOGOGOGO BELLAGIO!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

Bellagio = MGM. It's really just a matter of time before poker gets regulated and MGM and Harrahs open online casinos. Who knows whent this will happen though.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

Sounds promising

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

I actually said that from the real beginning, I think I also posted it here somewhere.

I always thought there was an agreament between the law makers and the big casinos, they were seeing their core business in danger and they probably realized it was too late to open thier online website.

This is the cheapest solution for them!

I am pretty sure with a US company behind with huge connection such as MGM Mirage online poker in US will be legalized soon.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

Yea, makes sense for MGM/Harrahs to pool together and get the govt to shut down online gaming. Then US companies come in and buy out all the sites and their customers at a discount, then magically the govt decides to regulate it and MGM and Harrahs have a virtual monopoly on online gaming.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

I heard it's being bought by ANDY BEAL for a COOL MILLION

Confirm/deny?

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I heard it's being bought by ANDY BEAL for a COOL MILLION

Confirm/deny?

[/ QUOTE ]
confirm

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

if an American casino were to buy PP, would Bellagio be the most likely choice?

if not, which one?

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

Good news maybe the US government will make a exception tax party poker and allow Americans to play at party legally with
and use neteller to transfer money to party poker

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

im so excited. when this happens and online poker is regulated by the us gov thisll start the biggest poker boom ever since the us government is the godfather of marketing

gogogogogo

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

Just from the business angle, the U.S. corps are in better position to get max value from the Party name. It wasn't so long ago Party was dumping mass $'s into American advertising, if they sell to an American corp they'll be much better positioned to bank on that investment. This should be worth many billions over time for whoever buys them, provided they put some money into Washington lobbies.

Speaking of Washington, maybe we shouldn't get too overjoyed just yet. I still think we're looking at 2 years until things really change. I just don't see them changing headed into major elections and I doubt this will be a first priority for the new people in office.

Alot will depends on how hard the WTO is willing to push with the threatened sanctions on intellectual property rights.

Then we'll have to see what sick taxes they stick the industry with to help an ever-sliding-closer-to-busto D.C.

Wow, I sound pessimistic in the face of good news.

I'll just sit back and try to think of all the new advertising and bonuses bringing in a tidal wave of fish. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I heard it's being bought by ANDY BEAL for a COOL MILLION

Confirm/die?

[/ QUOTE ]

die

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I heard it's being bought by ANDY BEAL for a COOL MILLION

Confirm/die?

[/ QUOTE ]

die

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, the 'confirm' stopped me for a about 2 sec, then I realized PP is worth ALOT more than 1 mil even crippled as they are. Shoulda put the number in the 20-40 range and you might have fooled some people.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

This would be like the perfect situationf or everybody. A USA casino get an established site and we get Party back.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

who cares about getting Party back if a US casino got an established site. every moron that plays live would be playing online.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Just from the business angle, the U.S. corps are in better position to get max value from the Party name. It wasn't so long ago Party was dumping mass $'s into American advertising, if they sell to an American corp they'll be much better positioned to bank on that investment. This should be worth many billions over time for whoever buys them, provided they put some money into Washington lobbies.


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What other online poker brands could we put in the same category? My picks:

PokerStars (largest right now)
Full Tilt (strongest branding)
Bodog maybe (for brand recognition)

Thoughts?

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
who cares about getting Party back if a US casino got an established site. every moron that plays live would be playing online.

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No way, many weak players play live but think online is rigged. Even legalized, I'm sure many of them will continue this belief. And computerized tables will make live much better, more hands/no tip.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I heard it's being bought by ANDY BEAL for a COOL MILLION

Confirm/deny?

[/ QUOTE ]

Jim, you really aren't funny, especially when you try to be. Please stick to losing your food money every week and pretending you can play good poker. That's the only way you'll ever get any laughs.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

Bodog is still privately owned (I think, I've only played stars the past year) and controlled, so I doubt they get bought unless they get a very nice offer. Though if the LV giants sense weakness they will probably try to beat them up enough to try to lowball them. I don't know enough about their balance sheets to say. Part of that story will depend on if sports betting is opened up online along with poker. With the WTO on Washington's back I see that being likely, which will make Bodog a far more attractive target. First with buyout offers then with aggressive moves on their market share if denied (think bodog type sexy ads but from the Vegas corps with far more to spend.) We're talking mega bucks into ads once this thing opens up. Unless they restrict it ala liquor ads I see poker ads not just on poker shows but on primetime & maybe even some of those multi-millions superbowl spots. Think about what a way that would be for a newly legal industry to say to the mainstream world, "we're here, we're legit, safe, and not going away!"

I don't know the numbers, but my impression is that absolute has lost ground to stars and fulltilt in the past year. I havn't followed what happened to the cheating scandal over there a few weeks back, but that doesn't seem to have gotten as much traction as I feared it might (b/c it would hurt the entire industry, not just them.)

Alot will depend on how many casinos will want into the market if they feel they can compete.

I'm particularly interested in LV Sands and what they'll do. They've recently made massive investments in Macau. It will be interesting to see with more computerized tables if they'll think to limk them to Macau players. Or Harrah's... imagine a WSOP played live but linked on computerized tables around the globe. Now nothing like this will happen for years... I'm taking the long view here, but imagine trouney fields around the globe in the 10's of thousands. The cards would keep flying as the sun set & rose somewhere else. If this sounds crazy, well casino are already beggining to get the tables and it's the only way live fields can grow; and if you run a massive corp like LV Sands or Harrah's you're always looking for the next growth opportunity, they don't come often for corps that big.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I heard it's being bought by ANDY BEAL for a COOL MILLION

Confirm/deny?

[/ QUOTE ]

Jim, you really aren't funny, especially when you try to be. Please stick to losing your food money every week and pretending you can play good poker. That's the only way you'll ever get any laughs.

[/ QUOTE ]


I notice 33% of your nine posts have been regarding me. Room for improvement?

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

I just bought it

Andy

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I heard it's being bought by ANDY BEAL for a COOL MILLION

Confirm/deny?

[/ QUOTE ]

Jim, you really aren't funny, especially when you try to be. Please stick to losing your food money every week and pretending you can play good poker. That's the only way you'll ever get any laughs.

[/ QUOTE ]


I notice 33% of your nine posts have been regarding me. Room for improvement?

[/ QUOTE ]

He wants a nice long visit from you at his London apartment. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

plz bellagio buy this ...bring partypoker BACK..plzzzzzz

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Yea, makes sense for MGM/Harrahs to pool together and get the govt to shut down online gaming. Then US companies come in and buy out all the sites and their customers at a discount, then magically the govt decides to regulate it and MGM and Harrahs have a virtual monopoly on online gaming.

[/ QUOTE ]
Hmmm...this is a little on the conspiracy theory side, but it may have been a factor.

Or at least, the US casinos didn't think supporting online gambling was in their interests, and so they never bothered. (I don't think the explicit 'discount' scenario was something they really thought about, but who knows) If they actually do lobby, that would motivate lawmakers quite a bit.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

If the LV movers are looking into buying Party, you can be pretty sure it's coming back to the U.S., the biggest possible market (at least until our currency collapses), imo. I think this is great news. It never made sense to me in the first place anyways, the legislation, because look at how much business those sites do. It's too much money being made to just try to stamp it out of existence. That's not what the venal swine in government do.

I think it's gonna go into another generation pretty soon, with the major Vegas players seeing representation online, and then it's gonna get bigger than it ever was. Here's to hoping. Peace.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

I forgot to add that I will continue to play online even if they publish a law tomorrow that says the penalty for doing so is death by stoning. And I encourage everybody to have exactly that attitude; just ignore them.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
In the world I see - you are stalking fish through the online canyon forests around the ruins of UIGEA law. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu NL stakes that wrap the Party Poker Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding uNL, laying strips of chips on the empty poker table of some online poker website.

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http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/ima...club-still.jpg

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

Party is not as valuable as Stars or FTP. Their public status will inflate the amount of money U.S. corporations will need to pay. Their absence from the US market will also hurt them and increase the value of Stars and FTP.

How much would someone pay for Stars and/or FTP?

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

Would this be a good time to invest in party poker or short it?

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

yes,

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Would this be a good time to invest in party poker or short it?

[/ QUOTE ]

If you believe that a US gaming company will end up buying PP soon, then buying would be the correct play IMO.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

The future of the online gambling business will either be 100% government-run, or 100% government-licensed on a territory-by-territory basis.

You are forgetting that the Nevada Gaming Commission started licensing online sports betting website a year ago.

StationCasinos.com, in partnership with COX Cable, started offering LEGAL online sports betting to Nevada residents 6 months ago.

Several European Union countries, notably France, Greece, Norway, and Sweden, are taking a hard line against offshore online gambling and are ready to push for a change in legislation in the European Parliament to exclude gambling from free trade agreements so that the governments can monopolize online gambling within their respective territories.

Germany is the big swing vote right now, as only a handful of German states are in favor of joining France and Greece in pushing for legislative change in the European Parliament.

As for major gambling countries outside Europe, the picture is actually very clear: 100% government-run or 100% government-licensed, with the government taking somewhere between 30% to 50% of the juice.

1. South Africa has announced that it will only license those online poker sites that have servers based in South Africa.

2. Vietnam has announced that the government will run a 100% government-owned online gambling monopoly. Ladbroke has the inside track on getting the 15-year service contract to run the site, at a minimum tax rate of US$60 million a year.

3. The government-granted monopoly PAGCOR in the Philippines has declared that it, and it alone, will monopolize online poker in the Philippines. A number of entities, notably WPT Enterprises and PokerStars.net, are trying to negotiate a partnership with PAGCOR.

4. Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) will enforce its 100% government-granted online gambling monopoly, which currently offers horse racing and soccer betting. The HKJC has blocked all attempts by poker entities, including WPT and PokerStars.net APPT, to put poker on television in Hong Kong.

5. Taiwan and Japan have similar systems: only the Ministry of Finance will be allowed to offer legal online gambling. One will expect a BANK in Taiwan and a BANK in Japan to be licensed to run online poker in these two territories if and when they are ready to offer online poker as a means to raise tax revenue.

6. As for Mainland China: as long as poker is classified as gambling, the government will have a complete monopoly. If the Chinese government were to reclassify poker as a "sport" the way Russia has done, then World Poker Tour Enterprises has agreed to pay $3 million for the first and last rights of refusal to offer poker in China through the year 2012. What WPT did effectively has blocked Harrahs, PokerStars.net APPT, PartyPoker, and anyone else from the China market for the next 5 years.

I don't blame PartyPoker.net for wanting to sell now, given that it has to see the writing on the wall: government-owned and government-granted monopolies will be taking control of the entire business, one country at a time.

--

The ONE online poker company embarked on a global crusade that is firing on all cylinders right now is PokerStars.net, with its "regional poker tour" concept around the world.

The prize pools offered by PokerStars.net EPT events now exceed those of the WPT when the two entities compete head-to-head with simultaneous events.

One would expect the PokerStars.net Asia-Pacific Poker Tour (APPT), which requires careful negotiation with government monopolies in each territory, to develop over time, with a 5-to-10-year horizon.

One would also expect PokerStars.net to eventually launch a tour in the Americas, with possibly stops at casinoes in Quebec, Bahamas, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile.

--

As for the first televised poker tournament driven by online qualifying to take place in Macau, a territory administered by the People's Republic of China and the #1 gambling city in the world in terms of gambling revenue: neither PartyPoker.net nor World Poker Tour will have anything to do with the project.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

^

Very well put.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I actually said that from the real beginning, I think I also posted it here somewhere.

[/ QUOTE ]

I did as well. The issue with Barney Frank's involvement with then UIGEA and all this talk of repeal has nothing to do with the rights of poker players. It has to do with banks and the large casino companies getting into the online biz. Harrah's and MGM will get into the online biz and you will fund them through your bank. Bank of America will be acceptable -- ePassporte will not. This is what all of this is building to and the Party Gaming people know it.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

The regional nature of this will dictate who has access, but on the technology side Party had done little to nothing to improve the user experience. Stars, FTP and others like PKR may leave Party in the dust. Party is still running on the same tired old platform they have had for years. I think they have lost any competitive advantage.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Several European Union countries, notably France, Greece, Norway, and Sweden, are taking a hard line against offshore online gambling and are ready to push for a change in legislation in the European Parliament to exclude gambling from free trade agreements so that the governments can monopolize online gambling within their respective territories.

[/ QUOTE ]
I can't speak to the rest of your post, but a) Norway is not part of the EU and b) sure as hell aren't pushing for changes to monopolize online gambling. In fact, the government already have a monopoly here (with lotto, sports betting, horses and a few other games) and recently announced plans for legislation that matches the US with regards to blocking payment to gambling sites (casinos/poker).

I don't think it bodes well for the rest of your post when you're basically making stuff up here though.

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

[ QUOTE ]
The regional nature of this will dictate who has access, but on the technology side Party had done little to nothing to improve the user experience. Stars, FTP and others like PKR may leave Party in the dust. Party is still running on the same tired old platform they have had for years. I think they have lost any competitive advantage.

[/ QUOTE ]
I still can't open up their tables on my desktop

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

agreed party have lost thier edge and need updating. this would definately be something they would perhaps have delayed in order to leave for new owners to deal with(?)

Re: Party Poker for Sale?
 

I just bought it, expect great things, coming soon!