WGES Live Blog – The Good, the Bad & the Ugly – Examining the Lessons Learned From the Deals of the Past 5 Years

• Session  – WGES Regulation & Economic Deals -15:30 CET
• Topic – Examination of  recent history M&A in gambling, with view to finding out growth through acquistion
• Session Speaker – Tom Hall –  One Works, Business Development Director , Isle of Mann

Session Summary
A study of recent gambling M&A history. Mr Hall looks to outline the successes and failures in the gaming sectors. The speaker also looks to give insight into trends and what major gaming operators are viewing as attractive for future acquisition in gaming. Tom Hall  sheds light on upcoming sectors and also focuses on the expanding Asian gaming market.

1. Study of success and failures in M&A – speaker outlines that failures in acquisition have been down to several factors, such as convergence of technologiesand corporate culture. Speaker also notes that certain failures have been driven by acquiring company being to ambitious and not understanding key competencies of their purchase and outlining specific goals post acquisition.
2. Tom Hall states that  US operators have been offline for a while now, so there will be short term benefits for them to partner with more up to date European operators. But it will be a short term thing. In the long run the US operators will have no need for European partners.The fact that many European operators are shedding their grey area markets in hope of qualifying for a US license if and when the market opens is extremely risky.
3. Speaker mentions that Asia is very desirable to major operators that do not have a foot mark in this lucrative market. He expects that the major acquisitions will occur with companies that have some form of presence in this market. Furthermore the speaker outlines that the Philippines will become a tech hub for this region.
4. With regards to traditional markets and new technologies. The focus will be driven by value added extensions to igaming operations such as optimised CRM, igaming analysis tools, social gaming / real money gaming hybrids. Mobile will not be an attractive proposition for M&A as it is already become a standard tool within igaming operations and the mobile market is already saturated.