PartyGaming Online Gaming Deal with ITV

Online gambling firm PartyGaming announced this week they will be entering into a "white-label" deal with British broadcasters ITV, strengthening an already existing deal between the two organizations.

PartyGaming has been working with ITV since June through an affiliate deal which linked ITV.com users to PartyGaming's popular online poker and casino websites (Party Casino and Party Poker).

The new deal will see PartyGaming deliver "white-label" online gaming products to ITV's websites. Some products have already gone live on ITV.com, including Emmerdale Bingo and a casino game, while ITV's Friends United has launched an online poker product.

PartyGaming stated in their Interim Results announced last week they would be looking to enter into white-label agreements, and the ITV partnership is the first one announced.

Both companies will be hoping the partnership will prove a resounding success. ITV has been under pressure from advertisers cutting their TV marketing budgets and putting the money into Internet campaigns. PartyGaming has been under the pump since last year, when it had to withdraw from the US market after the UIGEA slipped through Congress.

ITV have already dipped their feet into the online gaming waters once previously. Sportech signed a deal with ITV last year to provide gaming-related products via its interactive service, but the venture was a failure, with ITV choosing to cut their losses and their ties to Sportech in January of last year.

Things are looking up for Sportech, however. Reuters reports the UK Office of Fair Trading announced last week they had provisionally approved Sportech's acquisition of the Vernons pools business.

"Although Littlewoods and Vernons pools provide customers with similar products, we found little evidence that customers have switched between the two in the past," Competition Commission Inquiry Chairman Peter Davis said in a statement.

"(W)e provisionally conclude that Littlewoods and Vernons are not exercising a substantial competitive constraint on each other, and therefore allowing the merger would not result in a substantial lessening of competition," he added.

• 
• 
• Email to a friend
• Print