Rising Tide Games the suitor for bwin’s social gaming subsidiary
News on 2 Jan 2015
News on 2 Jan 2015
Earlier this week Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment revealed that it is in talks with unspecified suitors regarding the possible sale of its social gaming subsidiary Win, and it appears from a Wall Street Journal report that the company concerned is Maytal Olsha’s new company, Rising Tide Games.
Olsha is a dynamic industry exec who has held senior social gaming positions with 888 Holdings and more recently Zynga.
Quoting two informed sources, the WSJ says that New York-based Rising Tide envisions acquiring loss-making Win in exchange for a stake in Rising Tide, which Olsha founded after departing Zynga. The company has yet to launch a product.
Bwin.Party established Win.com in 2012 as part of a move into social casino games. The company said at the time it was investing up to $50 million in the effort over the course of two years, and it opened offices in Tel-Aviv, Israel, and Gibraltar, employing developers in Ukraine.
Win.com developed slot-machine apps, including Slot Craze, for Facebook and for mobile platforms.
However, the company appears to have fallen on hard times, laying off some of its team of about 40 in Tel Aviv, according to one source. And in a filing this week, Bwin said it expects a pre-tax loss of Euro 7 million from social gaming in 2014 (see previous report).
The sources emphasise that the negotiations between Bwin and Rising Tide are not yet final, and it is not yet clear how big a slice of Rising Tide Bwin will get in return for Win.
