Unibet Buys Bingo.com for $8 Million
Domain names are still a hot commodity and certain domain names are fetching big bucks. This week, Bingo.com was sold to the online gambling firm Unibet for a cool $8 million.
The Company is receiving cash consideration of $2,000,000 and redemption of the 15,000,000 common shares of the Company, which are held by Unibet, at a price of $0.40 per share.
Bingo.com is a OTC trading company using the symbol BNGOF and will soon be rebranding under the name Shoal Games Ltd. The firm owns a social gaming site called Trophy Bingo, not part of the deal.
"The online gambling industry as a whole is experiencing conditions of maturity where smaller firms are finding it increasingly difficult to compete," said Jason Williams, Bingo.com's CEO. "Bingo.com's European gambling business, built with the www.bingo.com brand and URL, has therefore found it difficult to compete effectively with larger operators."
"In response to these facts, the Bingo.com management team decided it was in the best interests of the Company to sell the online gambling business; the associated brand and URL and determined the offer negotiated with Unibet, the Company's own online gambling partner and technology provider, was fair and the best offer available to the Company for those assets."
Mr. Williams continued, "In June of 2012, the Company determined that a significant opportunity was developing for non-gambling bingo games and embarked on the development of a unique free social bingo game, that could be played world wide, without the regulatory constraints present in the online gambling industry. Accordingly, the Company has spent several million dollars over the past thirty months developing and soft launching Trophy Bingo, a social casino game that is now live worldwide in the Apple App Store and Google Play store."
"The game is a puppy themed social bingo adventure where players must win their way through 120 levels of bingo challenges. The game includes many innovations for social bingo including new power plays, a map progression system, unique game types, card blockers, bonus bingo rounds, and a bingo combo system. Trophy Bingo is free to download and supports in-app purchases for players who find themselves in need of extra bingos or want to engage with the premium power plays contained in the game."
"The $2,000,000 cash obtained from the sale of its online gambling business, in addition to the current cash on hand will enable the Company to continue to finance the development and marketing of Trophy Bingo. The return to treasury of 15,000,000 shares will be anti-dilutive to the Company by 21.22%, which is a great benefit to our shareholders," stated Mr. Williams. "The sale to Unibet Group plc includes the Bingo.com brand, which is needed for the cash gambling business, however the Company has built the Trophy Bingo game completely independent of the Bingo.com brand in its wholly owned subsidiary Shoal Media, Inc. Accordingly, the Company has chosen to rename itself Shoal Games Ltd. to reflect the Company's primary focus on social game development and publishing. Shoal Games Ltd. will remain an Anguillan public corporation, and continue to be listed on the OTCQB exchange.
"Whilst we will no longer trade under the name 'Bingo.com, Ltd.' or the symbol BNGOF," said Mr. Williams, "we believe that we will develop an even stronger company trading with the name Shoal Games Ltd. The Company will effect its name change to Shoal Games Ltd before January 31, 2015 and will announce both the date of the name change and the Company's new trading symbol on the OTCQB. It is the Company's intention to make Trophy Bingo one of the most popular and highest grossing social bingo games in the world. The ongoing live tuning and development efforts with Trophy Bingo have provided extremely satisfying results for the game's retention and monetization metrics. Trophy Bingo is a product that's rich in game play and offers players hours of entertainment in a completely new format for social bingo. The Trophy Bingo team is focused on releasing product updates and new features that will enhance the game's performance to the point where a significant marketing budget will be spent with the objective of moving Trophy Bingo into the upper ranks of the monetization charts for both Apple and Google smartphones and tablets."
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
