Chinese consortium agrees to pay $4.4b for mobile casino gaming startup

Photo credit: Ted Murphy 

A consortium of Chinese companies led by Giant, an affiliate of Shanghai Giant Network Technology, agreed to purchase social casino game startup Playtika for US$4.4 billion reported Venturebeat.

Other players in the Chinese consortium included Giant Investment (HK) Limited; Yunfeng Capital, a private equity firm founded by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. founder Jack Ma; China Oceanwide Holdings Group; China Minsheng Trust; CDH China HF Holdings Company; and Hony Capital Fund.

Israel-headquartered Playtika was acquired by gaming conglomerate Caesars Interactive Entertainment in 2011 but continued to operate as an independent subsidiary. It maintains offices in Argentina, Australia, Belarus, Canada, Japan, Romania, Ukraine, and the US.

The all-cash buyout deal came after Caesars reportedly decided to concentrate more on its offline gambling properties. It will use some of the money gleaned from the deal to reduce debt.

“We are incredibly excited by the commercial opportunities the Consortium will make available to us, particularly in its ability to provide us access to large and rapidly growing emerging markets,” said Robert Antokol, co-founder and CEO of Playtika, in a statement.

The startup says it has over 6 million daily active users in 190 countries and employs roughly 1,000 people to run the company. It’s best known for developing a number of social casino games optimized for mobile and Facebook. These work on a freemium in-app purchase model. Market research firm Eilers Research estimates Playtika generated roughly US$240 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2016.