The World Poker Tour Brand Now Owned By PartyGaming

23-11-2009

After months of working out the acquisition, this week PartyGaming finally confirmed that they are the new owners of the brand World Poker Tour in addition to other World Poker Tour related assets. There was a last minute attempt made by a media company based in Los Angeles to stop the deal, but the U.K. Telegraph reports that this attempt was quickly averted.

Mandalay Attempts To Stop The Acquisition

According to the U.K. Telegraph, Mandalay (the aforementioned L.A. based media company) proposed a 36 million dollar buy for the entirety of WPT Enterprises. This attempt was rejected by World Poker Tour, who favored the asset deal made by PartyGaming.

What Does This Mean?

Essentially, the deal means that PartyGaming will now have full and total rights to any land based World Poker Tour events that take place in the United States. In Europe, PartyGaming will have rights to 16,000 poker players who are paying for a subscription based poker service, and 150 hours worth of poker programming. The deal also include a rev-share program that will have PartyGaming dishing out at least 3 million dollars more throughout the next three years.

PartyGaming's Future

The deal is expected, obviously, to expand PartyGaming's reach in the industry as well as build their (already well established) brand name. PartyGaming expects to pick up a wide variety of new customers, and given WPT's popularity in the United States, this marks a huge step in preparations for opening up to the U.S. market.