Today, June 27, marks the one-year anniversary of PartyGaming's float on the London Stock Exchange. When the company launched its initial public offering it was the most popular online gambling website and one of the first of many online gambling companies to offer shares on the LSE and its Alternative Investment Market. Today the company remains the most popular gambling site, and it continues to dictate the pace of the industry, as evidenced by another series of announcements this week.
Through an agreement with the owner of the annual World Series of Poker (WSOP), Harrah's Entertainment, PartyGaming is an official sponsor of the WSOP. The agreement, which is rumored to be in the neighborhood of 8 figures, makes PartyGaming's play-for-free online poker site PartyPoker.net the official online poker sponsor of this year's WSOP.
The sponsorship will put the PartyPoker.net logo in the center of every playing table of the 2006 WSOP at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, which began June 25th and entails 44 separate events, including the $10,000 No Limit Texas Hold 'em World Champsionship Event, which takes place July 28 - August 10. The 45 events of last year's WSOP shattered all participation and prize money records for a live poker tournament, generating 32,341 player entries and more than $106 million in gross prize money. Joseph Hachem of Melbourne, Australia, won the No Limit Texas Hold 'em World Championship and an unprecedented $7.5 million.
The WSOP's kickoff event-- the third annual Tournament of Champions, which consists of 27 of the top WSOP and WSOP Circuit players of the past year competing in a freeroll No Limit Texas Hold 'em tournament-- culminated today with PartyGaming spokesperson Mike Sexton seizing victory. Another company spokesperson, Mike O'Malley also participated in the tournament.
PartyGaming expanded its product offering further yesterday with the launch of a backgammon website at PartyGammon.com. Players can download the PartyGammon gaming application and then participate in games for fun or for real money by using the same PartyAccount they use to play across PartyGaming's entire line of products.
The PartyGammon lobby interface is similar to PartyPoker's, and players can play a variety of gammon versions, including Hypergammon and Nackgammon. The software and application was created completely in-house by PartyGaming.
There have also been market reports in the last week speculating that PartyGaming is considering issuing debt in order to acquire a bricks and mortar gaming company. One particular target that has been mentioned is London's Rank Group Plc, an international gaming group that operates the Mecca Bingo chain, Grosvenor Casinos, Hard Rock hotels, restaurants and casinos, the Blue Square online gaming and betting shop brand, 11 bingo clubs in Spain, and two casinos in Belgium. With almost six million registered customers, over nine thousand employees and 153 licensed premises, Rank is one of the UK's largest gaming businesses.