Playtech has come out of the woodwork to confirm that it knows what is happening in relation to William Hill Online. The statement, delivered earlier, said, “As a minority shareholder in William Hill Online, Playtech says it is in talks with William Hill group about these operational issues.”
As you can see, it really doesn’t confirm a huge amount. We might have guessed for ourselves that the two sides are chatting it doesn’t state just how amicable these discussions are. It comes after Hills yesterday stated that the WHO CMO had resigned and 180 staff at the Tel Aviv office had walked out over job fears. The fact they’re talking about the operational issues seems to suggest a breakthrough could be made and the troops calm enough to be able to start working again. Continued disruption would do damage to WHO’s product and with no new marketing, it could start to go downhill.
The stock market isn’t confident either. Playtech (down 1.44%) and Hills (down 2.84%) both saw declines and they’re unlikely to recover until this is resolved. Whether it’s just Hills being foolish or part of their big plans to take Playtech out of the JV, the dust has yet to settle on this one.
Italy is one country that Hills had been quite excited about and figures from the AAMS show why. Since it launched a casino platform back in May, the company has a market share of 8.31% and is the fourth largest operator. Talk about rolling a six. Giulio Coraggio also reported the turnover for the country’s cash poker games reached €888million during September with casino games hitting €275m. Rather unsurprisingly, the market leader in poker cash games was PokerStars with 23.98% and 36.27% of the poker tournament market. Lottomatica took the casino games market highest share with 34.35%. It gives an idea of the success cash poker an casino is having in the country since its launch in February.
