Live casino technology specialists Evolution Gaming have gained a new global partner while one of its major investors looked to cash in his chips.
On Tuesday, Evolution announced a new ‘strategic partnership’ with Greek lottery/betting operator Intralot that will see Evolution provide live casino services to Intralot’s entire global market. Intralot has a presence in 44 regulated markets, although not all of them permit online casino play.
Evolution says the deal will allow it to launch live casino products in “several existing and new operations of Intralot.” Evolution chief commercial officer Sebastian Johannisson said his outfit was “delighted and honored” to have been selected by Intralot for this service, while Intralot CCO Nikos Nikolakopoulos welcomed Evolution as “a trusted member of our third-party ecosystem.”
Evolution is currently in the process of acquiring RNG casino supplier NetEnt, which has been branching out into the live casino space. While the live casino offering remains a minnow compared to NetEnt’s RNG operations, the company announced a new live casino deal with UK-listed online gambling operator 888 Holdings last week.
Evolution’s share price has gone on a tear ever since it announced its proposed takeover of NetEnt, hitting an all-time high of nearly SEK690 last week. That was apparently all the encouragement that investor Richard Livingstone needed to unload a good chunk of his significant holdings in the company.
Bloomberg reported this week that Livingstone, who until recently held a 16.4% stake in Evolution along with his brother Ian (a director on Evolution’s board), had employed Morgan Stanley to oversee the sale of 8.5m Evolution shares, equal to around 4.7% of the company. The sale was expected to generate as much as SEK5.9b (US$667.6m) for Livingstone, who reportedly needs the cash to offset pandemic-related losses in his real estate holdings.
Last month, the Evening Standard reported that the Livingstones had seen the value of their combined stake in Evolution rise 140% since the start of the year. The brothers are said to be worth a combined £3.9b, enough to rank them 36th on the most recent Sunday Times Rich List of UK swells.
