William Hill consider raising offer for Sportingbet

William Hill & GVC Holdings, is expected to raise its price after we reported earlier that Sportingbet had rejected a £350m approach. (see previous report)

The joint venture offerer a 52.5p a share bid to Sportingbet by letter, which was unanimously rejected by the Sportingbet board.

The £350m bid would have seen William Hill put up 45p a share in cash while Sportingbet investors would have received the remainder in GVC paper.

William Hill would not comment on the reports, but it is believed that Ralph Topping, William Hill’s CEO, and GVC boss Kenny Alexander will agree to raise the stakes before a Takeover Panel deadline on October 16.

Analysts expect the two joint bidders will have to offer more than 60p a share, even though the online bookie’s share price has not gone north of 52.25p since William Hill and GVC announced on September 19 that they were in exclusive talks about making a joint approach. A 60p a share bid would value Sportingbet at £400m.

William Hill is after Sportingbet’s Australian business, which accounts for 90pc of its profits.

GVC, which last year bought Sportingbet’s Turkish business for €142.5m (£113m), would take on the more politically sensitive, unregulated operations.

Sportingbet’s advisers at Lazard are trying to drum up interest among other operators in the sector, such as Ladbrokes, to spark off a bidding war.

But many analysts believe a rival approach is unlikely given that few others will want to take on Sportingbet’s unregulated assets.

Arsenal Lotto to support Arsenal Foundation

Arsenal Football Club is delighted to announce the launch of the Arsenal Lotto which will give Arsenal supporters the chance to win life-changing prize money twice a week and support The Arsenal Foundation in the process.

The Arsenal Lotto, the first of its kind in UK football, is set to be the biggest and most exciting fundraising initiative which allows fans over 18 to take part, win big cash prizes and make a difference at the same time.

The recently launched Arsenal Foundation, a grant making charity which transforms the lives of young people through sport and education initiatives, is set to benefit from all proceeds the Club receives from fans participating in the Arsenal Lotto.

To play the Arsenal Lotto, supporters will be invited to select six numbers online via www.arsenallotto.co.uk plus a ‘legend’ number from 0-9 to play this lotto the Arsenal way. Bets cost £1 per line and average jackpots of £4.7m with rollovers of up to £36m can be won.

The Arsenal Lotto draws take place every Wednesday around 6pm and every Saturday between 7pm and 10pm. Six numbers (the main numbers) are drawn, along with an additional bonus number plus the “Legend” number. The first draw for Arsenal Lotto players takes place on Saturday 29th September, the day Arsenal take on Chelsea at Emirates Stadium. Supporters can play online from Thursday 27th September to be in with a chance of winning.

Arsenal Football Club CEO and trustee of The Arsenal Foundation, Ivan Gazidis said: “We have been looking for ways to engage fans even more in the good work the Club does in its community and its charitable projects. Whilst some may wish to volunteer or participate in fundraising events, others may look for a more simple way to engage and raise money. The Arsenal Lotto gives them this option.”

Egidio Messito, CEO at MyLotto24 which powers the Arsenal Lotto said: “This launch is a game-changer for any organisation wishing to harness the power of lottery. Most important of all, thousands of young people will benefit from projects The Arsenal Foundation funds.”

bwin.party sells Ongame for an initial €15m

bwin.party has agreed to sell Ongame poker network to Canada’s Amaya Gaming Group for an initial consideration of €15m, with an additional amount of up to €10m becoming payable if regulated online gaming is introduced in the United States within five years.

The sale is subject to conditions including regulatory approvals and is expected to complete during the fourth quarter of 2012, at which time the management of Ongame will transfer with the business to Amaya.

Amaya will pay bwin.party €15m in cash upon completion, with up to a further €10m payable if regulated online gaming is introduced in the US within five years. The exact amount of the contingent consideration will depend on the extent of regulation in the United States based upon the number of states that regulate and the total population covered.

The terms of the sale are similar to those agreed between bwin.party and Shufflemaster before the latter withdrew from the deal, however, the overall consideration is now 15 per cent lower than that previously agreed with Shufflemaster.

bwin.party co-CEO Jim Ryan commented: “The sale of Ongame conforms to our strategy, especially as we move closer to launching our single, proprietary technology platform in the next few months. We believe Ongame will fit well into Amaya Gaming and has an excellent future ahead.”

“The acquisition of Ongame bolsters Amaya Gaming’s product portfolio, transforming Amaya into a leading provider of gaming platforms,” added Amaya CEO David Baazov. “Amaya looks forward to unleashing Ongame’s technology to its full potential through the leveraging of our many B2B relationships and delivering new partners and players to the network.”

Amaya said the acquisition of Ongame would position it to participate in the US market should the government decide to regulate online poker, while at the same time strengthening it's B2B interactive product portfolio.

Ryan Tunnicliffe's Manchester United debut wins his father £10,000

After betting £100 on his son when he was just nine, that he would play for the first team, Mick Tunnicliffe makes a 100/1 profit - with a 350/1 wager on an England bow waiting

The 19-year-old came on to replace fellow debutant Marnick Vermijl at Old Trafford, which was not only a personal highlight for the former Peterborough loanee, but a family highlight as his father’s 10-year-old 100/1 bet finally paid out.

Mick Tunnicliffe was so certain that his son would make it as a professional footballer he put a £100 bet on at bookmakers William Hill that his son would play a competitive first-team game for Manchester United.

The bet was looking good as Tunnicliffe progressed through United’s youth set-up, even captaining the academy to a FA Youth Cup triumph two years ago.

With £10,000 already in his pocket, Mick Tunnicliffe will be hoping his son eventually makes an England debut as he put on another £100 bet at the same time but with odds of 350/1 which, if successful, would pay out a further £35,000.

“The last time a bet of this nature cost us £10,000 was when Chris Kirkland made his debut in goal for England, also landing a £100 bet for his father,” said William Hill's media relations manager, Graham Sharpe.

“We will obviously be paying close attention to the progress of Ryan’s career in the future.”

Greece offers more OPAP to get privatizations on track

Greece will sell almost all of its stake in gambling monopoly OPAP, the government said on Thursday, increasing the amount that is for sale in an attempt to convince foreign lenders that it is serious about selling off state assets. Athens, which owns 34 percent of one of Europe's biggest gaming companies, has launched a tender to sell a 33 percent stake in the company, the privatization agency HRADF said. Previously Greece had planned to sell 29 percent of OPAP, currently worth about 450 million euros on the Athens bourse. OPAP is central to Greece's plan to raise 19 billion euros from privatizations by 2015 - a key condition of its 130-billion euro bailout agreed earlier this year. It is the country's most profitable state firm with a sports betting monopoly stretching, for some games, as far as 2030. Greece is badly behind on privatization targets and the three-month-old, conservative-led government has pledged to do better as it struggles to convince the EU and the IMF to resume the bailout payments that keep the country afloat. "The fact that OPAP is being completely sold off shows the government's will to privatize," said Dimitris Mardas, an economics professor at Thessaloniki's Aristotle University. HRADF set an October 19 deadline for expressions of interest and said the tender would be carried out in two phases. After an initial declaration of interest, bidders will be called to submit binding offers, HRADF said. The agency has the right to introduce an intermediary phase of non-binding bids in order to evaluate bidders' business plans. "The complete privatization of OPAP will be carried out transparently, rapidly and with efficiency," HRADF's chief executive Yiannis Emiris said in the statement. A senior government official told Reuters earlier this month that Athens aimed to find a buyer for OPAP by January and that four consortia of Greek and foreign companies were interested in the company. Turkish conglomerate Dogan Holding said on Monday it would consider taking part in a sale tender for OPAP. Investment funds Fidelity and Silchester Inv. already hold 5 percent each in the company. Greece has picked Deutsche Bank and National Bank of Greece as financial advisers, it added. Athens has already moved to clear issues that might block the company's sale. Earlier this month, it settled a row with European Union competition authorities over how the company should be taxed and set a new 30 percent levy on gross earnings from next year. But investors' appetites might be dampened by an ongoing court challenge against the Greek company's monopoly brought by Britain's biggest bookmaker William Hill and online gaming companies Sportingbet and Stanleybet after they were denied gambling licenses in the country. A senior EU legal adviser raised questions about OPAP's right to control all betting in the country last week. Greece's highest administrative court is expected to issue a final ruling on the case in the coming months.

Tackling match fixing needs good governance

In the past two years, the world of sport and politics finally woke up to the fact that match fixing is a serious threat to the integrity and popularity of sport and the livelihoods of all those involved in sport, especially professional and amateur athletes. The result is a flurry of international dialogues and initiatives, including a number of law enforcement partnerships and the “Nicosia declaration on the fight against match-fixing” just approved by the European Union-Sportforum under the Cyprian Presidency. These are welcome steps. We now have serious political muscle brought to bear on a problem that has mushroomed globally, primarily because of the massive increase in sports revenues, international betting and the growth of organised crime in this area. But sometimes I fear that many of these efforts are primarily focused on blaming the athletes, without enough attention given to the problematic circumstances they face in their respective sports and that this focus distracts from the continued lack of good governance at the top of sport organisations. What sports organisations have not yet acknowledged and what the EU declaration points out briefly, is that there is a strong link between good governance in the bodies that run sports and the sport organisations’ credibility in the fight against match-fixing. This is important. Unless sport organisations are accountable and transparent they will not have the authority to tackle the problem and win the trust of those involved in sport as participants or fans. The “tone at the top” is decisive when confronting wrongdoing and everybody involved in compliance and anti-corruption work will tell you this whether it is in sports, government or business. Corruption within any sport can come in many forms. In football, for example, weak national sports bodies that do oversee best practice in their leagues often allow team owners to misuse players and thereby make them vulnerable to match fixers. We see sad examples of this in the FIFPRO black book for 2011 which documents case studies of players bullied or not paid for months. We also see this in the use of cash to pay players’ and officials’ expenses, and even huge sums for players’ transfers. Wherever there are cash transactions people can get used to not documenting payments transparently and there is room for illegal, off-the-books transactions. A culture of transparency and education are the best ways to prevent abuses. Players and officials need to know that their leagues and sports organisations are there to support them and this must be explicit in the form of codes of conduct that are put into practice every day. In my view, sports organisations must remain outside of government and function independent of political influence – because it is all too easy for politicians to co-opt sport for their own purposes. History shows us how bad this can be. But being accountable in one’s own affairs and therefore implementing good governance is a prerequisite for autonomy. The European Union has put it clearly in its communication on the European dimension of sport (January 18, 2011, 4.1 Promotion of good governance in sport): “Good governance in sport is a condition for the autonomy and self-regulation of sport organisations.” Sport organisations on all levels have to work on their governance. The EU is supporting this process by funding projects on good governance. Some sport organisations have started, some – like FIFA – forced to do so by major scandals, others – like the International Cricket Council – on their own. From the point of view of a civil society organisation that has spent the last two decades looking for ways to fight corruption, the Nicosia declaration on match fixing provided a welcome endorsement of the role of prevention and education and linked it to good governance within sporting bodies. At Transparency International we are closely watching how our first initiative in this area plays out in the field. The Deutsche Fussballliga (German professional football leagues I and II) teamed up with Transparency International Germany to develop a programme on preventing match fixing with workshops for players and coaches. In May 2011 an ombudsman was introduced to the league who will be a point person for whistleblowers. We are also in contact with the European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL) to use the German experience in other countries. To my mind, sport is moving in the right direction but the commitments to improve education and prevention now must be followed through, just as the reform processes with international sports organisations must be seen as more than just window dressing to stave off political meddling.

PokerStars publishes Full Tilt player repayment plan

With the relaunch of Full Tilt Poker on track for the first week of November, new owner PokerStars has published details of its US$184m repayment programme to former Full Tilt customers outside the United States. Since the company reached agreement with the US Department of Justice in July to acquire the assets of Full Tilt, PokerStars has been working with regulators in a number of jurisdictions to validate the rightful ownership of Full Tilt accounts and to ensure that all repayments are made in compliance with local regulations. As a result of those discussions, former Full Tilt customers in the regulated markets of Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France and Spain are to be repaid via the locally licensed PokerStars platform in order to comply with local regulations. Players will be required to ‘pair’ a PokerStars account with their former Full Tilt account so as to be able to either withdraw or use their balances on the local PokerStars site. PokerStars said that it is also working with Italian regulators to determine the appropriate process under Italian regulations, and said that it would release details of the process as soon as possible. In all other markets with the exception of the US, players will have full access to their accounts when Full Tilt relaunches in the first week of November. As per the agreement with the DoJ, former Full Tilt players in the United States are to be reimbursed through a remission process administered by the US government.

IGT shuts down Online Poker Operation in Europe

One year after International Game Technology acquired Swedish-based Entraction Poker Network for $115m, the operation is scheduled to shut down due to regulatory changes. The company is advising online players to switch to an alternative network by Dec 11, 2012. The decision comes as some countries barred residents from playing with customers in other nations, but will not affect its operations in Nevada. In statement, Patti Hart, IGT CEO, said the poker shutdown was “purely focused on our European dotcom business and does not impact future decisions regarding entry into new markets.” “Change and uncertainty in European market conditions have diminished the expected returns in certain real money wagering products,” commented a IGT spokesperson, “As a result, we are consolidating our product development, We are maintaining our options for future changes in market opportunities.” IGT reconfirmed that it will continue to supply its industry-leading online gaming services to Europe, including slot machines, bingo and sports wagering. It said it will use the Entraction technology platform in conjunction with its Nevada online poker systems. The company acquired a Nevada internet poker license earlier this year. Skins that are currently operating on the Entraction Network are now looking at alterative networks. High on the agenda is the Microgaming Network due to low liquidity. Numerous poker rooms on Entraction have now e-mailed their customers informing them that they will be moving to a new network.

Greece agrees flat tax on gambling winnings

Greece’s finance ministry said on Wednesday it had agreed with the European Commission to set a flat 10% tax on player winnings from both online and slot machine games operated by state-owned betting agency OPAP from next year.

OPAP, one of the prime assets set for privatisation as part of Greece’s debt-cutting efforts, has been the subject of complaints by online gaming operators because of different tax treatments for online games and slot machines.

The finance ministry said it had agreed to harmonise tax levels at a flat level of 10% on all on all winnings from online and slot machines from Jan. 1, 2013.

William Hill & GVC to bid for Sportingbet

William Hill and GVC Holdings have confirmed they are in the preliminary stages of considering a possible joint offer for Sportingbet.

A statement – issued after the recent movement in Sportingbet’s share price – said it was currently envisaged that William Hill would acquire the Australian and certain other locally licensed businesses with GVC acquiring the remaining parts.

Any offer would be substantially in cash with an element of GVC paper.

The boards of William Hill and GVC believe that by acting in combination they represent a highly credible possible offeror for the entire Sportingbet business, substantially in cash. The statement added that no formal approach has been made to the board of Sportingbet yet.