May 26th, 2011
Via Kevin’s Corner, a report on Harrah’s recent acquisition of Playtika:
The iGaming world is a buzz with the news that Harrahs has purchased the Israeli social and casual game development company Playtika. This transaction is quite significant from a strategic and industry perspective.
The subtle significance of this transaction indicates that Harrahs is taking the online social and casual game very seriously. This is important because Harrahs is considered a “gambling” operation and not an Internet social gaming company. Playtika’s games are clearly modeled after casino games. However, they are free to play with “virtual currency” transaction options.
This transaction is important because of the size of the payout for Playtika coming close to 90 million USD. It indicates that Harrahs envisages some serious revenue and branding coming from these games.
More importantly Harrahs has decided it is not going to wait for US gambling law to change before it goes online. Harrahs wants to build an online brand now, obtain expertise in managing an online gaming property and establish a close linkage between its off line properties and its new online brand.
Harrahs wants to acquire online players now through social gaming and understand how the social gaming business works. Most of the iGaming industry is still in denial about the importance of social and casual gaming for the purpose of profiling and up selling into Internet gambling offerings. Harrahs gets it and knows that with 1/2 billion people in Facebook, the average age over 35 and most of them playing Facebook like games there is definitely some serious cross over.
Gary Loveman has always been an innovator in the US land based market and he has been working hard over the years to bring his company into the digital age. Gary is building the business and operational acumen to make this happen. He is moving far ahead of his rivals at this point. Can they catch him?
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