Poker News: Party Gaming progress by CEO Garber

During press interviews surrounding the welcome news that Party Gaming is stabilising 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 $637000 a day, but these had recovered to an average of $721000 per day.



However, over the last four weeks, an average of approximately 52000 non-US players per day had contributed an average gross daily revenue of approximately $921000 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 159711 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 capitalise 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."