Online gambling technology providers Playtech have shored up their bingo offering via the acquisition of bingo tech outfit ECM Systems.
On Friday, Playtech announced that it had agreed to pay £14.9m to acquire 90% of ECM’s share capital. The remaining 10% will remain with ECM CEO Allen Richardson, who has agreed to stay on in the CEO’s chair for the next three years.
ECM supplies bingo software and hardware to a number of major retail bingo operators, including Gala Leisure, Mecca Bingo and leading independent firms in the UK and Ireland. In its fiscal 2016, ECM generated revenue of £9.1m and adjusted earnings of £4.5m.
ECM has been upgrading its digital offering in recent years and now earns a significant slice of its revenue from providing and licensing software that powers handheld Electronic Bingo Terminals in bingo venues.
Playtech CEO Mor Weizer celebrated ECM’s EBT presence, calling the acquisition “a significant step in strengthening and expanding” Playtech’s ability to offer a true omni-channel offering to its existing bingo clients.
In other Playtech news, the company has launched two new Batman-themed slot titles for both desktop and mobile, the first products under the partnership with DC Entertainment the company announced in February.
The slots aren’t based on the darker Batman reboots of the past decade, but instead are based on the camp 1960s Batman TV series, so presumably players can expect lots of ‘pow!’ and ‘wham!’ pop-ups at critical junctures of their slots play.
Playtech says four more Batman slots are in the pipeline, as well as “a host of” other Warner Bros. Consumer Products DC-branded titles that will arrive in 2017 and beyond.
