After several months of negotiations bwin.party has finally been sold. For a while it seemed like GVC Holdings/Amaya are going to be the new owners, but 888 Holdings swooped in with a massive £898 million offer in the last second and acquired the company.
On July 9, bwin.party released an official statement that they find the offer from GVC Holdings suitable and that they are hoping to complete the deal in a couple of days.
According to the news GVC was offering €1.4 billion for the company, which is 11% more than then what the current stock value is worth. GVC Holdings has also confirmed that they are partnered with Amaya Gaming in the transaction and that the whole online poker section of bwin.party would go to them if the deal is struck.
After this 888 Holdings also made their offer of €1.3 billion and on Friday the two companies announced that bwin.party has officially been sold to 888 Holdings.
With the infusion of the new PartyPoker players, 888poker is now by far the second biggest network on the market.
They are still well behind PokerStars but the combined power of 888poker and PartyPoker should still balance the market a little bit, it will be interesting to see how the market leader will react to the news.
