Big news in sales and acquisitions as it’s been announced that gaming giant 888 will be selling their bingo business to concentrate on their core offerings of sports book and casino. The move will see 888 bingo assets, which include Dragonfish and 888 brands such as Wink and 888Ladies being sold to the new buyers for $50m with and additional $4m earnout. You can read more about the deal here.
The buyers are Saphalata Holdings Ltd, a subsidiary of the Broadway Gaming Group. Broadway Gaming will be familiar to bingo players through their brands Butlers Bingo, Diamond Bingo and Rosy Bingo, as well as for hitting the headlines earlier this year with fines from the Gambling Commission regarding their Ts and Cs being misleading. Broadway’s bingo sites have not really been big players in the marketplace, so this deal has come as a bit of a surprise, given the comparative years of experience and reach between the two companies.
888’s bingo has a pedigree that reaches back to the earliest days of the game online, and has been the platform for some of the UK’s biggest bingo brands over the years. These days it’s a shadow of its former self, but it’s still a huge network and supplier of the game here. However, it seems being part of a bigger company has not helped the bingo progress, and to some extent it’s been a loss-leader for 888 whose focus has never quite been sharp enough to do the bingo side of things the justice it deserves.
Even back in the earliest days, the 888 software lagged behind newcomers and other big bingo providers, it felt old and under-featured. Recent years have seen improvements and the tech catch-up, but it’s also seen shrinkage elsewhere – many of the smaller skinned sites powered by 888 shut down and disappeared, their bingo market share likewise has been dented by the likes of Entain and Progress Play powered sites. Whilst they continue to provide an acceptable bingo offering, it’s never really been the first choice (or second or third, come to that) for seasoned online bingo players.
So it will be interesting to see what Broadway can do with it. Despite its own issues, tribulations and changes in the market, Broadway Gaming has remained resilient and hung in there where many other small networks have not. Their sites were powered by Microgaming, and now Progress Play bingo, so what will access to Dragonfish’s software bring? Maybe they’ll ditch it altogether and just focus on the customers who come with the sale, or maybe they’ll look to integrate or improve it. We’ll be keeping an eye on it either way.
