Plumbee in social gaming joint venture with Sportingbet

Major internet gambling group Sportingbet plc has entered into a joint venture agreement with social gaming firm Plumbee with the intention of exploring the real-money social gambling sector.

The JV, titled Bonza Gaming, will be headed up by Sportingbet’s former head of mobile Rick Brownlow as chief executive officer, based in London.

He is to lead a multi-disciplined team of 12 initially and will be autonomous in seeking to exploit opportunities for crossover between the social casino and e-gaming sectors across multiple platforms.

Brownlow said this week that the joint venture ushered in a new era in gaming: “We’re combining the wealth of experience and knowledge of different gaming sectors that Sportingbet and Plumbee bring to explore a new way of gambling online and on mobile,” he said.

Plumbee co-founder and chief executive Raf Keustermans added: “This joint venture is a bold new step for Plumbee and we’re confident that the mix of Sportingbet’s 14 years of operating betting and gaming sites globally and Plumbee’s social experience will successfully create and market a product for this new and exciting sector.”

Founded in July 2011 by Keustermans, COO Gerald Tan and CTO Jodi Moran – all former Playfish employees – Plumbee’s flagship app Mirrorball Slots went live in March this year and attracts 1.1 million monthly active users, according to AppData, generating revenues of around US$1 million monthly.

Sportingbet CEO Andy McIver said that his company had spent the past year working out the best strategy to enter the sector before deciding to partner with a social games studio, describing Plumbee as “the perfect fit.”

He added that the decision to let the joint venture operate autonomously was to ensure that the team focused on the social gaming opportunity rather than share in-house resources on the project.

Sportingbet remains the subject of an acquisition offer from GVC and William Hill plc, with negotiations reportedly nearing a successful conclusion.