Gaming Corporation plc is clearly still on the acquisition trail,
following up last week's purchase of Ted Loh's Got2Bet portal with the
acquisition of Newbold Enterprises Limited, the owner of Gambling.com.
The purchase price, at GBP 10.5 million is believed to represent an
attractive profit for Gambling.com's owners, who took the site over
from founder Graeme Levin after a prior deal with IGH for GBP 2.5
million fell through late in 2003.
Former owner Graeme Levin said at that time, "I'm pleased to tell you
that Gambling.com has been sold to a group of independent investors who
are backing the current management team led by Tim Rosenberg and Dylan
Schlosberg. Tim has been Gambling.com's CMO and Dylan ran Herotech,
responsible for our advertising and media buying."
Levin was unable for commercial reasons to disclose the purchase price,
but confirmed that the takeover became effective at the end of December
2003.
Gambling.com converted to a search engine format but has been active as
a premiere directory in casino, poker, and sports betting since 1997.
Income is primarily generated through pay per click advertising where
clients bid to reach higher rankings in the search results, a model
used by other search companies such as Google and Overture.
Gambling.com is the number 1 listing on google.com for "Gambling"
search and has over 500 other internet and affiliate sites linking to
Gambling.com globally. It also has extensive expertise in direct
mailing and has built a double opt-in database of over 200,000 members.
The consideration for the acquisition of Newbold is US$20 million (GBP
10.5 million) to be satisfied as to US$15.3 million (GBP 8.0 million)
in cash and US$4.7million (GBP 2.5 million) in new ordinary shares. A
total of 17,375,244 Gaming Corporation shares are being issued, of
which approximately 7.38 million are subject to a lock-in of six months
and the balance has been placed on behalf of the vendors of Newbold
with institutional investors. As at 28 April 2005, Newbold had a net
cash balance of over US$850,000, which implies an enterprise valuation
for the business of US$19.15 milion (GBP 10.1 million).
