888, PartyGaming: B2B vital hedge against protectionism
PartyGaming and 888 will pursue aggressive business-to-business (B2B) strategies in emerging territories to safeguard against local monopolies if emerging regulation is protectionist, chief executives Jim Ryan and Gigi Levy said today.
PARTYGAMING AND 888 will pursue aggressive business-to-business (B2B) strategies in emerging territories to safeguard against local monopolies if emerging regulation is protectionist, chief executives Jim Ryan and Gigi Levy said today.
Speaking on the CEO panel of the European iGaming Congress and Expo (EIG) in Copenhagen, Denmark, 888 chief executive Gigi Levy said: “Regulation is the big thing facing us. It is the one thing that could change the industry altogether on the European side. The question is how to overcome the challenge of big local players dominating markets, and to mitigate this risk we turned to B2B.
“Partnering with local companies through B2B relationships mitigates against the risk of business-to-consumer (B2C) strategies that can occur though regulation.
Referring to the US market, Levy said: “We were the first operator to withdraw, and we have the deal with Harrah’s, and we feel that via our B2B arm we can hedge our position on the USA opening.”
However William Hill Online chief executive Henry Birch said that he wanted “to sound a note of scepticism about business to business deals in other markets.”
“If you look at a market like the UK, we have seen big brands like Tesco, Yahoo and Sky that have all tried to set up their own gaming companies, but people have always gone back to dedicated gaming providers that they trust. People would rather bet with Bwin in Austria and Germany than they would with T-Mobile Gaming.”
PartyGaming chief executive Jim Ryan (pictured) disagreed, saying that a B2B division was vital for growth.
“It is not just media that B2B is focused on,” Ryan said. “State lotteries or other state run operators will seek to enter the egaming space, and anyone who wants to be on this panel in five years time will have to have a B2B offering.”
Ryan congratulated 888 on its deal with Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment, but added that while the deal is the industry’s first B2B deal with a US operator, “it is the first, but it won’t be the last.”
Gigi Levy added that the major operators on the panel, which also featured Betfair’s David Yu, Bwin co-CEO Norbert Teufelberger, Ladbrokes eGaming’s Ed Andrewes and Unibet’s Petter Nylander, together account for just 5% of total egaming market outside the US. “There is more demand out there than we can cater for,” he said.
As reported on EGRmagazine.com, 888’s half-year results showed B2B division Dragonfish having saved 888 from a sharp drop in revenue.