Bwin.party digital entertainment is co-directed by Jim Ryan and Norbert Teufelberger; respectively of Party Gaming and Bwin – two extremely powerful European-facing online gambling companies. They quite recently merged to form the new and even more powerful Bwin.party brand.
When UIGEA was promulgated in the US back in 2006, Party Gaming took legal advice and left the country. At the time they were the biggest and most successful online poker brand in the land, under the name Party Poker. Companies such as Full Tilt Poker (FTP) and PokerStars were only too happy to step up to the mark and fill the gap left in the US online poker market. Since then, Ryan and his staff have been sitting on the rail watching while PokerStars, FTP and others reaped huge benefits from the risks they were taking.
When Party Gaming exited the US market they were on top of their game – a force to be reckoned with. Due to their domination of the American online poker market – they were one of most successful and largest online gambling companies in the world. Their share price plummeted, and in Ryans words; ‘we were beyond the point of frustration’, while they watched these so-called illegal poker sites grow massive liquidity at their expense.
When Jim Ryan joined Party Gaming as CEO in 2008, he impatiently bided his time and while he was waiting kept himself busy by talking to Bwin. The logic behind these talks were that a merger of the strong online sports-book of Bwin, together with Party Gaming’s poker, should result in an online gambling company which, together with a US partner, could re-conquer this continent. So the story goes – it all began when Ryan took Teufelberger to a McDonald’s for lunch in La Linea, Spain. It just goes to show that an expensive lunch of paella is not necessary when business makes good sense!
Ryan had fine-tuned Party’s B2B capabilities during this time, and he figured logically that any new regulation for online poker in the US would favour existing land operators. This is in terms of securing online licenses. He also said that they needed to be realist about where they were situated in this massive food chain.
Ryan has apparently spent three weeks out of the last five in the USA peddling the strengths of Bwin.party digital entertainment. One the strongest selling points is the fact that this company is now the largest publicly-traded online gambling firm in the world. It’s a very strong selling point, when you are selling yourself to massive risk takers in the US land gambling industry.
He makes a strong statement in pointing out that the two largest US online Poker brands – PokerStars and Full Tilt are both under indictment; in fact FTP is in a lot more trouble than that. He recons the fact is, that apart from these two brands, which may never get back into the US – Party Poker is the most well- recognized online poker brand in the world, and they are seeking out US partners.
