Playtech, Scientific Games sign landmark 'B2G' deal
Playtech has signed a joint venture with Scientific Games to target state lottery operators internationally, as well as signing a new tie for games machines, in a landmark pair of deals positioning it in new markets via Scientific Games' client list of 120 state gaming providers including the Chinese State Government...
PLAYTECH HAS signed a joint venture with Scientific Games to target state lottery operators internationally, as well as signing a new tie for games machines.
The 50/50 lottery joint venture, called Sciplay, will target government lottery contracts, or what the companies term the ‘business-to-government (B2G)’ market, to deliver online technology to government-backed lottery operators.
This will combine Playtech’s business-to-business (B2B) gaming software and product portfolio with Scientific Games’ links providing solutions to government-backed gaming operators in regulated and soon-to-be-regulated jurisdictions.
New York-based Scientific Games has 120 customers worldwide including UK National Lottery operator Camelot and the Chinese State Government, for whom it produces eight billion State Sports Lottery scratchcards each year.
The two companies have hired Fun Technologies president Richard Weil as managing director of the new business.
Playtech will seek to use the deal to position itself closer to the US market ahead of any overturning of the ban on online gaming, via Scientific Games’ roles a supplier of lottery systems there. Many industry figures predict that intrastate models operated by state government-backed providers are a more probable route to legal egaming in the US than federal bills such as that proposed by Congressman Barney Frank.
The deal will also help fend off the threat of the growing number of operators entering the B2B space. These include Bwin, which announced a new push on B2B last week; PartyGaming, which signed a B2B deal with Danish monopoly Danske Spil to supply online poker and casino last week in line with chief executive Jim Ryan’s view that B2B is a vital hedge against protectionism in newly regulated markets; Paddy Power, which launched a B2B arm and signed a deal to supply France’s PMU with a sportsbook in November; and the 888 B2B arm Dragonfish launched in March 2009, which has won a string of B2B deals including with US casino giant Harrah’s.
Chief executives Mor Weizer of Playtech (pictured) and Mike Chambrello of Scientific Games released a joint statement that read: “We have highly complementary skill-sets allied with a global reach and this partnership provides the opportunity to leverage off this combined know-how to maximum effect.
“Customers will benefit from best of breed content, sophisticated player management systems, and long-standing industry experience in providing highly secure, regulated, compliance-oriented services.”
Playtech and Scientific Games have also signed a contract for Playtech’s remote server based gaming machine business, Videobet, to develop new terminals for Scientific Games and its subsidiary The Global Draw, which currently operates some 18,000 server-based gaming machines worldwide. The tie will begin with an agreement to build 13,500 new Videobet fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) for the UK betting shop market.
For more on this topic, see our Need To Know blog post: Mor Weizer is not dyslexic.