Social gambling industry leader Zynga has seen its general manager depart on the eve of the company’s long-awaited IPO. Jeremy Verba has departed to become CEO at eHarmony where he hopes to find even more love – couldn’t have picked a better company, Jez.
During his time at Zynga, Verba was responsible for Treasure Isle, which ended up hitting 28 million monthly users at its peak before declining. His 18 months at the firm were during a period of huge growth in the CItyVille, FarmVille and Zynga Texas Hold-em free play poker products. The future does look good for the firm as a tie-up with Google earlier in the summer will ensure a stable footing on the Google Plus platform. The IPO itself is expected to raise around $1bn with the company’s valuation looking to hit around $10bn to $20bn.
Lithuania has released its latest figures in relation to the country’s gambling industry for the second quarter of 2011. Compared with last year, gross gaming revenue (GGR) from slot machines and betting shops both showed an increase. This was in contrast to the traditional casino gaming industry that saw the decline continue.
Casino tables, that includes roulette, blackjack and Russian poker, has seen GGR of €6.9m for the year to date and if you project that over the entire 12 months it will be less than the €15.5m achieved last year. If you look at betting shops that number of €3.9m for the first half of and that will be around a million more than last year’s figure of €6.9m by the year’s end. The reason for the decline could be anything but players moving to the online gaming industry could easily be one reason. The table below shows the figures and how they’ve continued to decline.
