Gaming Giant Bwin To Sell Off Social Gaming Interests

Gibraltar based gaming giant Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment has announced that they intend to divulge themselves of their online social gaming interests after what has been an unsuccessful foray into the popular gaming medium.

With the rise of online social gaming and social media sites such as Facebook, there appeared to be plenty of money to made for providers in this area, but not, it seems, for Bwin.

How It Began

Bwin entered the social gaming market in 2011 filled with confidence in this brave new world that was booming, and was hoping and ready to benefit from the sustained growth in this area.

Looking to make a splash, Bwin threw $50 million of investment money into their new WIN platform with the belief that this not insignificant amount of money would be enough to help them on their way in this new market, and gain them a whole new slew of customers which may have been previously out of their reach.

Bwin’s strategy was to lure gamers from the online social gaming sphere into other traditional areas of gaming and gambling, where they are a major player and have an entrenched network of platforms and systems already in place.

How It Faired

Unfortunately for Bwin their great adventure into social gaming did not proceed as planned, as neither the much hoped for players or the associated revenue arrived in the numbers that they were looking for.

This can partly be attributed to the speed that certain online gaming markets have opened up, and the lack of political will or appropriate regulations that are in place in these emerging jurisdictions.

With a loss of $8.5 million recorded for the recent 2014 period the writing was on the wall for WIN, and so it seems the end is nigh for this rather expensive little (or big) exercise.

How It Might End

And so the fire sale begins.

Bwin has made recent comment to media that they are now in discussions with a number of interested parties regarding the sale of their WIN venture.

It seems a quick sale is hoped for by Bwin to stem the tide of ongoing losses, and it will be interesting to see how much this chapter in Bwin’s history has cost it; how the financial markets react to this; and who will be interested in stepping up to the plate to take over the reins of the online social entity WIN, and what will become of it in the future.