During press interviews surrounding the welcome news that Party Gaming
is stabilizing following the impact of its withdrawal from the US
market, CEO Mitch Garber gave some interesting insights into the way
forward for the group, which generated over $25 million in revenues
over the past four weeks.
Describing the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in the United
States as "....a blow to our business for sure, but one
thing that I am very pleased to say is that our group has absorbed
and now recovered from this incident," Garber told a conference
call: "PartyGaming is no longer a poker-led, U.S.-dependent
and one language gaming operator. We are rapidly becoming a multi-lingual
and multi-currency non-U.S. company."
Earlier, a Party Gaming communication revealed that the impact of
the US departure on revenues had been substantial, with poker income
reaching a low of $637 000 a day, but these had recovered to an average
of $721 000 per day.
However, over the last four weeks, an average of approximately 52
000 non-US players per day had contributed an average gross daily
revenue of approximately $921 000 across all gaming operations but
excluding those of the company's new sports betting interests following
the acquisition of Gamebookers earlier in the year.
If U.S.player action is incorporated into the Q3 results, the period
reflects 159 711 average daily players who contributed an average
of $3.6 million per day. In Q4 there should be no US participation
following the groups exit from the US market in early October.
However, Garber would not speculate on fourth quarter potential, saying
the group can not reveal fourth quarter key performance indicators
but will issue further results information in March 2007.
Looking ahead, the Party Gaming CEO said that the group continues
to look for merger and acquisition opportunities: "We will
continue to pursue deals that are accretive and can add either management
or product expertise to any of our operational lines, and we will
be pushing further into new territories as a main and key objective
of M & A and in our organic business plan," he said.
Certainly Party Gaming has not been sitting on its corporate hands,
having pushed ahead with its Gamebookers brand conversion to PartyBets.com
in late November and cross marketing the new addition to the casino
and poker client base. Virtual Racing was added to the group offerings
around the same time, together with PartyBingo.com's UK launch early
in December. The appeal of the flagship brand of the group, Party
Poker.com was extended with the introduction of the first multi-lingual
version - in German - and further language and currency versions will
be launched next year, says Garber.
On the marketing front, Garber hinted at new creative approaches,
saying: "We're looking at viral marketing. We see that
the Youtube's of the world are creating an incredible amount of views
and we're looking at ways to capitalize on that new phenomenon. We're
also developing some of our own content to be broadcast on our website
as part of a new community that we're building inside Party."
Adding that PG advertising is likely to become very geography-specific,
Garber explained: "Some geographies don't allow television
commercials, some geographies don't allow gaming advertising, some
geographies only allow online advertising, so broadly speaking we
have new creative, we have product specific creative. I think we have
some very good affiliate programs that we're rolling out in the New
Year, and that's our strategy for 2007."
The imminent entry of the giant US land gambling group Las Vegas Sands
into the European online casino market is viewed by Garber as a positive
sign, but he is clearly prepared to compete vigorously for the business,
commenting: "They are setting themselves up for a large
online presence in the future, and if I had to guess, I would guess
that they also see their presence in Macau and soon in Singapore as
a launching pad to have a strong Asian Internet presence as well.
"Clearly there are opportunities in markets that have yet to
be tapped, and I think Las Vegas Sands is probably thinking about
that, and I think that quite frankly we'll get there first."