The warrants to 2 500 000 class B shares in internet gambling group Entraction are being sold by the Global Betting Exchange Group (GBE), the parent company of Betdaq back to the online casinos company for a price SEK21 per share (Euro 2.1) currently valued at around SEK 80 million.
Entraction will lay out a total SEK 23 million (Euro 2.25 million) if shareholders are in agreement at an extraordinary general casino bonuses meeting to be convened soon.
A company spokesman said that had GBE exercised the warrants it would have created a dilution in capital of 19.4 percent. Instead, Entraction would cancel the warrants on execution of the acquisition.
”We have enjoyed the support of the Global Betting Exchange Group in agreeing to Entraction acquiring the warrants at a price substantially lower than current trading price,” Entraction chief executive Peter ?str?m said. “The exercise of the warrants would have incurred a large dilution at a low valuation, relative to the strong development Entraction has shown the past two years.“
He added that the purchase of the warrants will affect cashflow, but not financial results as the cost is made against equity.
NetplayTV plc, an interactive television online gambling group that is usually the bearer of acquisitive and good casino news for investors, has posted a GBP 3.2 million loss in its half year casino bonuses results, due mainly to the one-off cost of restructuring the company to take advantage of the more liberalised television regime in the UK.
The firm announced that revenues fell 8 percent to GBP 9.3 million, and that the sale of its premium rate telephony business, Abstract Games earlier this year had affected performance.
Martin Higginson, chief executive of the group said these were one-off costs necessary to secure the further advance of the company in interactive television gambling, now permitted at certain hours by the UK regulator.
“These decisions have allowed us to fully exploit the UK terrestrial TV opportunities and are an important move if we are to enter into long-term deals with major global broadcasters,” Higginson emphasised. He claimed that recent agreements with leading companies had positioned the group in a dominating position in the the UK terrestrial and digital TV interactive gaming market, enabling it to generate stronger and better quality revenues.
The company release showed gross bets up 31 percent to GBP 204 million for the half yeat to end June 2009. Management expects this to continue to grow with the addition of terrestrial TV channels STV and Channel Five in late September 2009. The number of active players has grown five-fold since launching on terrestrial TV in mid-September 2009.
NetPlay also flagged the launch its interactive mobile to TV product, with mobile gaming margin revenues increasing 450 percent to GBP 900 000 for the first half of 2009, up substantially from GBP 200 000 over same period last year.
Interestingly, the statement also revealed that NetplayTV’s recent backend live gambling deal with software provider Playtech plc had made it necessary to postpone the move of its SuperCasino live casino offshore; this will now only take place towards the end of the year.
The Las Vegas land casino gambling venues deal approximately 11 million hands of online poker a day; by comparison, the social networking games developer Zynga is currently dealing an average of 150 million hands of internet poker a day.
The comparison is a startling illustration of the power of the Internet, a medium which Zynga has turned to its advantage bigtime.
A company spokesman this week revealed that Zynga Poker (formerly Texas Hold’Em) is the number one poker game on Facebook, where high rollers and amateurs alike play join the action.
“An average day finds Zynga dealing about 150 million hands compared to 11 million hands dealt in Las Vegas,” the spokesman said. “On any day and at any time, Zynga Poker hosts 250 000 concurrent players, making it the world’s largest live casual casino and seating more than 3.5 times the audience of the average NFL stadium.”
The company has enjoyed success with other games, too, quadrupling its monthly users over the last six months, making it one of the fastest growing applications on the Internet.
In April 2009, Zynga had 30 million monthly active users playing its games, and since then the number has grown to 129 million. Every day, approximately 34 million users worldwide play Zynga games according to Developer Analytics. Zynga estimates its current monthly unique visitors are at 70 million, and the company boasts it has four of the top 10 games on Facebook:
“The rise in social gaming reflects the immense popularity of Facebook and the need for people to connect, play and express themselves with others,” said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga. “While it is still early in social gaming, the success of our games with the user community underscores the sheer size and potential of this new movement which will finally let fun become the biggest way people interact.”
Whilst Facebook is Zynga’s biggest outlet, it’s games are also available on MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Tagged, Yahoo! and the iPhone. The company is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, IVP, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel, and is headquartered in San Francisco.