Unibet Buys Bingo.com
Thursday January 1,2015 : UNIBET BUYS BINGO.COM
Sellers plan to focus on free social bingo.
The owners of Bingo.com have sold the online gambling operations and assets of the firm to the Unibet plc group for a consideration totaling $8 million, and plan to focus on fremium social bingo going forward.
In a statement on the last day of 2014 the company, which owns the free-to-play social bingo enterprise Trophy Bingo, revealed it is to adopt a new corporate identity under the title Shoal Gaming.
The consideration is made up of $2,000,000 in cash and redemption of the 15,000,000 common shares of the company which are held by Unibet, at a price of $0.40 per share. The 15,000,000 common shares held by Unibet have been returned to the company's treasury for cancellation.
The sale of the URL www.bingo.com and its online gambling community, and the company's proposed name change to "Shoal Games Ltd." were approved unanimously by shareholders representing 60,271,734 common shares or 85.27 percent of the company's issued voting common shares.
"The online gambling industry as a whole is experiencing conditions of maturity where smaller firms are finding it increasingly difficult to compete," explained Jason Williams, Bingo.com's CEO.
"Bingo.com's European gambling business, built with the www.bingo.com brand and URL, has therefore found it difficult to compete effectively with larger operators.
"In response to these facts, the Bingo.com management team decided it was in the best interests of the company to sell the online gambling business; the associated brand and URL and determined the offer negotiated with Unibet, the company's own online gambling partner and technology provider, was fair and the best offer available for those assets."
Williams says that in June of 2012, Bingo.com management determined that a significant opportunity was developing for non-gambling bingo games and embarked on the development of a unique free social bingo game that could be played worldwide, without the regulatory constraints present in the online gambling industry.
Several million dollars were invested in developing and soft launching Trophy Bingo, a social casino game that is now live worldwide in the Apple App Store and Google Play store, he revealed, adding:
"The game is a puppy themed social bingo adventure where players must win their way through 120 levels of bingo challenges. The game includes many innovations for social bingo including new power plays, a map progression system, unique game types, card blockers, bonus bingo rounds, and a bingo combo system. Trophy Bingo is free to download and supports in-app purchases for players who find themselves in need of extra bingos or want to engage with the premium power plays contained in the game."
Williams says the $2,000,000 cash obtained from the sale of its online gambling business, in addition to the current cash on hand will enable Shoal Gaming to continue to finance the development and marketing of Trophy Bingo, which has been designed as a completely independent entity separate from Bingo.com within a subsidiary titled Shoal Media Inc., an Anguilla registered public corporation.
"It is the Company's intention to make Trophy Bingo one of the most popular and highest grossing social bingo games in the world," Williams said. "The ongoing live tuning and development efforts with Trophy Bingo have provided extremely satisfying results for the game's retention and monetization metrics.
"The Trophy Bingo team is focused on releasing product updates and new features that will enhance the game's performance to the point where a significant marketing budget will be spent with the objective of moving Trophy Bingo into the upper ranks of the monetization charts for both Apple and Google smartphones and tablets."
