The world\’s largest online poker company has agreed to pay $14.5m in cash for the business, assets, player database and intellectual property of Multipoker, including the Multipoker brand and the MultiPoker.com site.
MultiPoker is a leader in online poker in Scandinavia with more than 250,000 registered players.
PartyGaming also announced the end of its skin arrangement with IntertopsPoker.com, which will become an affiliate of PartyPoker.com, and confirmed that Coral Eurobet has decided to leave the WPC platform and will migrate its customers to a new poker platform in the next few weeks.
“PartyGaming’s business strategy is being implemented as planned. We now look forward to the launch of the Party-branded integrated platform in the first half of 2006, which will expand the number of games available to our customers through one account and a shared purse,” said Richard Segal, Chief Executive of PartyGaming.
Robin Chhabra, analyst at Evolution Securities, said PartyGaming is consolidating its \’skins\’ into a single system “to further squeeze down the price it pays for Empire.”
“They\’re just deciding now if they\’re going to squeeze it and then buy it, or just kill it,” he added.
Paul Leyland, analyst at Seymour Pierce, said “PartyGaming is simply moving towards what it has always wanted: total control of the value chain.”
But he also believes Empire would not be affected.
“Empire Poker is strong enough on its own to cope with this,” he said.
The news lifted PartyGaming shares 2 per cent to 93.75p.
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