Tribeca Integration Complete By March 2007

Published: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 Online-Casinos.com

TRIBECA INTEGRATION WILL BE COMPLETE BY MARCH 2007

Playtech pushing ahead with Tribeca Tables absorption

In an interview with Playtech CEO Avigur Zmora this week, Reuters reports that integrating the players of former rival Tribeca, which Playtech agreed to buy in November 2006, would probably be completed by the end of the first quarter of 2007.

The $75 million deal brought with it a number of Internet gambling websites operating on Tribeca's poker software platform, including VCPoker, PaddyPower Poker, Blue Square Poker and Scandinavian group, Expekt (see previous Online-Casinos.com/InfoPowa reports).

"There are very high margins because of the great synergies," said Zmora. "The vast majority of the expenses are going away - the developers are already there, and it needs a little bit of customer support, a little bit of graphics."

"They're talking about something like $4 million a quarter, during August, September, October, then you can expect about 80-85 percent of that going to Playtech's bottom line," he revealed.

Zmora said that Playtech would also benefit from significant cross-marketing of online games to players using Party Gaming's newly acquired Empire Online and IOG Internet gambling websites.

"Cross-selling will be significant," he said, adding that generally, roughly 10 to 30 percent of players would typically cross between linked sites.

Zmora said there were further opportunities available for acquisitions in the online gaming sector, hinting that Playtech is not yet done on the M&A front.