Exclusive: Playtech bolsters social with 95m Viaden/CTXM buy
Software giant acquires CTXM and invests in 20% of Viaden both from Playtech founder Teddy Sagi " companies will focus on social gaming rather than real-money products.
Playtech has acquired gaming software supplier CTXM and agreed to purchase a 20% stake in social casino and mobile business Viaden Gaming, both from majority shareholder Teddy Sagi, in a deal estimated to be a combined price tag of 95m, eGaming Review can exclusively reveal. eGR also understands that Playtech has acquired a stake in Zeda Poker, a B2C social site “powered by Viaden Gaming.”
Following Playtech’s veiled stock market update announcing it would invest 95m in social projects 10 days ago, sources close to the matter confirmed that the expanding software business agreed both deals a number of weeks ago. Sagi, under the banner of his wholly owned Winner Group that operates Winner Poker and casino “ run on Playtech software “ is known to have acquired all of Viaden’s assets as early as nine months ago and CTXM in January this year in deals worth considerably less than the price Playtech paid for each entity.
The 95m investment was described officially by Playtech as designed to give it access to “a broad range of social gaming platforms and products,” the company said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange on April 16 as it looks to move to the full list later this year. The company also announced it had signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding to acquire a 20% stake in a social gaming company, now known to be Viaden “ a company in which Playtech founder and 48% majority shareholder Sagi retains “a beneficial interest.”
Two senior CTXM executives, who wish to remain anonymous, confirmed that Playtech had acquired all of its assets. This confirmed comments made to eGR by a former CTXM employee in January that Sagi had invested in the business in order to take charge of Slots Farm, its social gaming offering.
Slots Farm, which currently has around 1.4m monthly active users according to AppData, was launched on CTXM’s Gaming OS platform in August last year. Following the deals, Sagi was appointed as a special advisor to Playtech’s board for a nominal salary of 1 a year.
As a result of the acquisitions both Viaden and CTXM will now shift their focus from developing real-money gaming products to concentrating on social and mobile development.
Viaden has already begun recruiting new clients for its social poker software signing a deal with Barcelona-based affiliate marketing company Cmedia to launch Soda Poker, targeting the Spanish, French and Italian markets. The software can be integrated onto Facebook, Android and iOS platforms, as well as being available to play in-browser with a downloadable version also available.
The software for Soda Poker is almost identical in appearance to Calshark, the free-play dot.com poker site launched by the California Online Poker Association (COPA) in October last year, which went live with software provided by Playtech and “supported by” SciPlay, the joint venture company formed in January 2010 between Playtech and Scientific Games.
The JV was “restructured” in January this year, with all SciPlay entities, including Calshark, being put under Scientific Games’ control.
It is unclear what the deal will mean for CTXM’s existing customers; the company currently supplies low-revenue, non-casino games to 32Red, who are otherwise almost exclusively supplied by Microgaming, Playtech’s main rival in the software provider space. EveryMatrix, which has launched a number of CTXM products on its platform, claims not to have integrated the company’s products onto its systems.
Playtech and Viaden have already worked together on version 2.9 of Viaden’s online casino software “ released in late February this year “ which features the option to integrate the company’s onto Playtech’s gaming platform for the first time.
eGR attempted to contact Playtech on a number of occasions, however no one was available to comment.