Ladbrokes takeover approach on 888

[News Hound]

Frequent speculation in the M&A sector this year was that Ladbrokes would make a bid for online gambling group 888 and this is apparently about to occur with the UK publication - The ...

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[Webzcas]

Now this is very interesting. Would Ladbrokes if they did take over 888, keep 888 as a seperate entity, or would they migrate everything onto their own platform?

In terms of infrastructure, 888's operation is in the same building as Ladbrokes Casino, Sportsbook, Games and Poker operations in Gibraltar, so there certainly wouldn't be any issues on that side.

[KasinoKing]

WOW - that's very interesting, if true.

Some years back (maybe 5 or 6...?) Casino On Net (888.com) claimed to be the biggest casino in the world.
That may well have been true in terms of number of registered players - they were one of the earliest online casinos and used to push themselves through advertising VERY hard.
In those days their bonuses were very generous too, and many "savvy" players were able to take advantage of their generosity () so they would have been pretty popular.

But they seem to have gradually lost their way - and lost their players.
The good bonuses all dried up and to make things 10 x worse they introduced a ludicrous rule that people depositing with Neteller (the most popular method for the majority of gamblers) had to wager x50 for bonuses, instead of the x20 people using other deposit methods faced.
They also used to take 7-days to pay players as standard - people just are not going to put up with that.

They were also the subject of quite a few player complaints about winning being confiscated on "shady grounds" and even got a reputation for ripping-off their advertising partners (affiliates). I promoted them myself for several years until finally realising it was a 99% certainty they were robbing me.

These days I almost NEVER see them mentioned on the player forums - either for good or bad reasons. To me that says it's because virtually no-one is playing there.

So these days I would think they are a much smaller operation than most other online casinos and a relatively small target for Ladbrokes.
My guess would be Ladbrokes' interest stems from the deal done between 888 and the Vegas casino Hurrahs which will see this giant of the land-based world enter the online scene. With Hurrahs going online, there will no doubt be more pressure put on the USA government to relax their draconian anti-gambling restrictions and open the market to free-trade once again.

So yeah, I can see why this might be true.

[Webzcas]

More on this here: Ladbrokes - 888 Deal Confirmed

I just also spoke to someone I know who works for Ladbrokes in Gibraltar, and whilst it is still early days, this looks like it could well be a done deal this time around.

[Webzcas]

Be interesting if there is any more movement on the 888 acquisition by Ladbrokes now the Christmas and New Year holiday period is out of the way.