Party Gaming Announces Deal With French Betting Operator PMU

Online gaming group Party Gaming, best known for its poker room PartyPoker, announced that it has signed an exclusive multi-year agreement to provide online poker to bookmaker PMU (Pari Muteuel Urbain), France’s monopoly betting operator.

The two companies will create a PMU-branded online poker service using Party Gaming’s software that will be incorporated into PMU’s player account systems. The service will also provide access to the liquidity on Party Gaming’s French poker network. The online poker site will be available when Party Gaming and PMU have obtained the required French licenses.

“Today’s agreement with PMU is consistent with our stated strategy of securing a small number of high value partners in regulated markets,” said Jim Ryan, Chief Executive Officer of Party Gaming. “PMU is widely recognized as one of Europe’s leading betting businesses and we look forward to providing them with a world class poker service.”

PMU is France’s parimutuel horse racing company and is the largest horse race betting organization in Europe. The company recently announced its 12th consecutive year of growth, with turnover of €9.3 billion, of which €660 million was generated from the PMU betting website, and a gross profit of €2.2 billion in 2009.

Last year, PMU came to an agreement with Irish bookmakers Paddy Power, who will provide the French organization with expertise on fixed-odds betting and pricing tools. That deal, also a five-year agreement, is expected to add between €3 million and €5 million to Paddy Power’s revenues by 2012, something Party Gaming would certainly like to achieve with its new arrangement.

This is the second business-to-business deal from Party Gaming this year after the company’s five-year agreement with Danish state lottery Danske Spil in January. That deal will allow Party Gaming to provide an online gaming platform for poker and casino games in Denmark once the market opens to private operators in 2011.

Those deals, on top of the takeover of the World Poker Tour (WPT), give reason to believe that Party Gaming will improve on its poor fiscal performance in 2009. Party Gaming showed a net revenue of $446.2 million in 2009, a 5.7% decline from $472.9 million in 2008.

Party Gaming purchased the WPT’s parent company in early November for $12.3 million, giving it the rights to a number of land-based events in the U.S. and Europe as well as an extensive library of over 150 hours of poker programming that is broadcast in more than 150 countries. Later that month, Party Gaming signed a three-year deal with Italian gaming operator Fueps, adding another site to its Italian poker network.

Ryan declared that he believes Party Gaming is well-positioned for 2010: “With some acquisitions and major B2B deals already under our belt, we plan to do more in 2010 and I believe we are on course to meet our objective of becoming the world’s most valuable online gaming company.”

PartyGaming is traded on the London Stock Exchange under the prefix PRTY.

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FAVORITE - Before all the cards are dealt, a hand that figures to be the winner. Ant: UNDERDOG.
RUNNER-RUNNER - A hand made using both of the last two cards dealt.
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