Online gambling technology supplier Playtech has opened a new live dealer online casino studio in Romania’s capital.
On Wednesday, Playtech announced it had opened a new state-of-the-art live dealer studio in Bucharest. The facility is intended to take advantage of Romania’s recent push to liberalize its online gambling market, in which Playtech has been granted four B2B licenses covering software, live studio, platform and hosting services.
Playtech’s new studio is equipped with HD cameras trained on a bevy of Romanian-fluent dealers offering classic versions of live blackjack, roulette and casino hold’em as well as Playtech’s proprietary tweaks on old favorites. Playtech’s live dealer rival Evolution Gaming opened Romania’s first live dealer studio last September.
Playtech CEO Mor Weizer said the new studio would help burnish the company’s reputation as a live dealer supplier par excellence, while promising that Playtech’s “live casino roadmap” would add more studios and game variants over the course of 2017.
Playtech won’t issue its full-year 2016 financial performance until February 23 but the company did issue a trading update this week that promised the final numbers would be in line with market expectations. The company also announced that it has agreed to an extension of its arrangements with UK bookmaker William Hill until the end of 2019.
Finally, Playtech announced that 12-year Playtech veteran Ron Hoffman has ditched his current position as Chief Financial Officer to become Chief Executive Officer of Playtech’s financials division. As a result of the switcheroo, Hoffman will immediately surrender his seat on Playtech’s board of directors.
Andrew Smith, Playtech’s current Head of Investor Relations, will assume the CFO position as well as Hoffman’s seat on Playtech’s board. James Newman, a veteran of PR and marketing firm Bell Pottinger, will take over Smith’s Investor Relations brief.
Playtech, which has made major additions to its financials division in recent years, was among the companies that saw their share prices fall in December when the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority announced new restrictions on spread betting and contracts for difference operators.
