The day after 888 CEO Gigi Levy reassured the world that the wedding plans between his online gaming company and Ladbrokes were progressing apace, it seems Ladbrokes is having similar discussions with software providers Playtech. Reports last month indicated that Playtech was talking to 888 about a possible takeover, but perhaps they were just feigning a lust for 888 to make Lads jealous. Anyway, standard caveats have been issued about the preliminary nature of the talks, which The Telegraph reports are not limited to a simple share-based merger. Did someone say three-way? No, seriously… Cuz we’re up for it…
Elsewhere, some interesting results from a British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) staff survey. The Ipsos Loyalty survey, obtained by The Tyee via freedom of information request, involved 85% of the Canadian province’s government-run gaming company’s 880 employees. Numerous questions were posed and the results were tallied separately for each of BCLC’s 68 different departments. For instance… When asked whether they had “confidence in decisions made by senior leadership,” only 50% of the folks in Player Services agreed, while a mere 23% of Lottery Development people gave their top execs a thumb up.
Meanwhile, 100% of those polled at the President & Executive Assistance Division (the aforementioned ‘senior leadership’) responded in the affirmative. One hundred percent. You gotta admit, that’s pretty good. Those are Mubarak-worthy election numbers. Of course, it’s worth noting that this survey was conducted in early 2010, prior to the gaffe-prone launch of their online offering PlayNow.com. We’ll await the next survey to learn whether that perfect score is repeated, or whether the people on the bridge of the Titanic have taken to listening to iceberg-spotting employees like this one, who told Ipsos: “Our current strategy is to take a bunch of products that weren’t acceptable to be released in previous years and to fire them out into the market as fast as possible to make a quick buck.” Employee of the month, right there…
