Bwin.party CEO: GVC integration will complete within two years
Norbert Teufelberger says merger would have taken a year and a half longer under 888 proposal
Outgoing bwin.party CEO Norbert Teufelberger expects his firm’s imminent merger with GVC Holdings to take two years to complete, a year and a half less than the integration roadmap set out by rival bidder 888.
Speaking to eGaming Review, Teufelberger said the bwin.party board was “impressed” with GVC’s “much simpler integration plan” and said bwin.party had learned the lessons from a protracted merger process with PartyGaming in 2011.
Teufelberger said one of the deciding factors in bwin.party’s decision to side with GVC was the shared DNA of their sports betting operations, with plans to migrate its offering to the bwin.party platform.
“All in all, it is going to take us a year to a year and a half shorter to complete the integration than it would have with the 888 deal,” he said.
“GVC formulated a clear vision for growth, which is something we were lacking last year. And I am confident we will achieve greater cost savings and synergies than the 125m by the end of 2017.”
The integration time is much shorter under the GVC proposal given it is transfering its brands onto the bwin.party platform, which the operator said was akin to adding a major white-lable customer.
The 888 proposal, on the other hand, would have required integration across multiple product lines and would have been “on a similar scale” to the bwin/Party Gaming merger.
Teufelberger admits Bwin’s merger with PartyGaming was “more difficult to implement” than initially thought but argued the experience meant bwin.party was well prepared for the GVC deal.
“I am proud that we are now seeing the benefits of the PartyGaming/bwin merger, even though on paper it has been a tough integration process,” he told eGR.
“We have really become good operator again, we have combined the two companies technologically and no one else has gone through that process.
“I think many will have to go through that effort to know exactly what it means and just how painful it can be,” Teufelberger added.