Pokerstrategy.com was sold to playtech for 38kk$
http://www.pokerstrategy.com/news/co...company_74488/

What does it mind for members?

the news states that it will be the same as before, but they only added ipoker rooms in the last time and promoted these heavily(they have 10 ipoker rooms and 8 others). and ipoker now gets a lot of information on player activity in other rooms and networks. ipoker is suspected of spamming customers with casino advertising, and now got a bunch of adresses (ps.com states they have 6kk members).

Pretty interesting news. 49.2 million USD.

yes, you are right. i mixed up $ and euro.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...00028T20130711

Mind=Blown

38.3 - 18.5 = 19.8 Million Euros they paid for a company which made 19.5 Million Euros in profit last year. I don't understand why anybody would sell a business which prints money for one year of earnings, but hey, wonderful deal for Playtech. They were probably paying over half of that money to them in affiliate commissions so they have cut down their liabilities by a lot - and picked up the site for basically nothing. nh wp.

good or bad for the poker community?

+1, this just doesn't make any sense. Numbers must be off or something

at the end of last year/beginning 2013 they lost partypoker,888 and bwin as a partner. and party probably got them the most money, because it was their only room for quite some time, with many heavy rakers. so i think they will earn a lot less this year. and they do a trading school now, which they didn´t sell. they sold casinocheck, too.

Last year it was the last year they were working with Party Poker and allegedly most of the profit Pokerstrategy was making was from there. They were the biggest affiliate with huge deal and were printing money that way but then in November or so Party decided to close the deal due to their pro fish friendly shift.

So their last year results might be great but this year it would be way worse. Still it is really suprising it got sold so cheap. I mean they have like 6 milion player base which is worth a lot by itself jsut the problem is that last 2 years or so no one was willing to work with them (FTP,888,Party/bwin).

Sites don't want to pay for regs anymore everyone is focused on recreational players and honestly it is good for us regs. The market will get better without huge influx of pokerstrategy players (Poker would never get so big in Ukraine or Belarus if not for pokerstrategy)

big rake numbers being spoke about and saying it will have an affect on the traffic they send to stars/tilt also

http://www.pokerupdate.com/news/busi...or-38-million/

couldn't agree more. the only thing anyone ever says about ipoker is that it's a nitreg fest. sounds miserable, even with absurd under the table rakeback deals. this deal would seem to perpetuate that.

it's not surprising that 2 of the only sites actually growing are Bovada/Bodog and 888, the 2 primary sites adopting a model revolving around recreational players.

The reason Ipoker is a nit fest isn't that much because of the under the tables deals but because they are the only big network that is almost officially bot friendly. Same for colllusion they never fight against it. It isn't a suprise given that the owner of the Playtech was convicted for a fraud.

I wouln't say that bodog/bovada has been successful. You forget about their eu branch (bodog.co.uk and bodog.eu) that went bankrupt and was sold to the Asian branch.

Their model wasn't successful on highly competitive European market so thats the reason why they focused on markets where gambling is ilegal but on the other hand there are very few competitors. So US and Asia the only exception is Canada where their postion is quite strong but it is mostly because that they are managed by the same people as bovada and they are good at thier stuff (which is huge contrast to former bodog.co.uk team who overinvested mostly in the UK market and went bankrupt). There is a reason why we can't play bodog in Europe anymore

it really isn't hard to come up with an explanation.

nosediving new sign-ups, negative rake development, downtrending activity on forum (therefore less general interest in poker), ..., ...., ....

its pretty obv that the owners of PS don't see a bright future for online poker, so they sell it while they still can - and its good decision btw.

I don't think anyone is disputing that, just that they might've been able to get a few dollars more for it

well, then the state of online poker must be even worse than we think AND they don't have any kind of bargaining power.

it looks like the majority of their profit came from iP, so guess which of the two parties had a VERY comfortable negotiation position?

Yeah just in current enviroment they have a product that noone wants to buy. Everyone agrees that it is ridiculous price given that it is still a huge company but they have been downtrending for a last 2 years or so they just gave up. Playtech bought 6 milion+ player base and thats the assset that is worth the most. They still have some rev shares so overall it is good business for them too.

Kinda sad cause I started with pokerstrategy 4 years ago with their free 50$, same like milions people that were introduced to the game that way and soon it will be gone, Pokerstrategy will be just a history. Sad

1 to 3 years net profit is standard valuation for an Internet business. Two years is right in the middle of the normal range.

I am really surprised at how much profit they make. Spose all the other players must bring in a lot more rake than me.

This is really really good news. Pokerstrategy is HUGE especially in Europe. Their statistics are just insane, especially as most of their profit comes from NEW players. They have got to be the biggest gateway of new players to online poker of all time, by a mile. I've been to Pokerstrategy's HQ in Gibraltar (used to coach there) and talked to some manager about their statistics / member numbers etc and it was just mindblowing.

All the networks have been dying lately and it's started to look like in 2 years we'd have a full-on Stars/FTP monopoly (which would be terrible). I guess iPoker isn't going to die now. Now if Party could figure out their ****, make their Zynga connection work and get competent people to run the site (get rid of segregation, update software etc) online poker might actually have a long-term future.

ipoker is infested with bots, and they are winning a lot of money. Tons of data can be found in some threads in MSNL backing this up.

Smaller ones, yes. A company with 200 employees, 6m clients and assets of €18m (in addition to the net profit) isn't quite the same thing.

That being said, there aren't a whole lot of potential buyers around, so they probably had to take what they could get

Just to set the facts straight, Bodog.eu is still active and is the site that offers services to Canada and a number of markets world wide. No Bodog operator has ever gone bankrupt.

All major operators are in Asia where Bodog now has its head office so the competition is fierce there, just as it is in Canada.

Bovada, though on the Bodog Poker Network is independently owned.

We think the Bodog Recreational Poker model has been amazingly successful and we expect the rest of the industry to continue slowly evolving in this direction!

Thanks,
Becky

LOL Becky bodog.eu and bodog.co.uk were ownded by the same London company that went bankrupt. It has been taken lately by the bodog.ca and they just redirect their Canadian traffic there.

The company behind bodog.eu and bodog.co.uk did went bankrupt and sold their assets so the poker network and brands (the network and brands I believe were taken by bodog88 just lately bodog.eu and bodog.couk were taken by morris mohawk who owns both bovada.lv and bodog.ca).

Somehow you "forgot" to mention those facts. BTW I believe that Canada is the only market where poker is legal and bodog network is strong. You aren't able to compete with anyone where it is legal to offer poker/betting/casino (guess you don't even try). I do understand that it is probably way more profitable that way but don't spin the facts the way you like cause there are at best half-truths in what you were writing.

This.

Juk