2010 Not a Good Year For 888 Holdings

It’s been a very “tough” year for 888 Holdings thus far, however with a renewed marketing strategy in place we’re set to rock the boat within the next year and to boost our company’s revenue stream dramatically by means of downscaling our operating expenses, the chief executive of 888 Holdings said to eGaming Review.

“To date our poker efforts has been disastrous since we’ve started out in 2008 up and till now.  The only exception was earlier this year in January when we reached a run-rate in January of US$300m,” Gigi Levy mentioned.

“The fact is we are just as big as Bwin, however with less profit to show.   We have two options here or we cut our operational costs or we up our profit margin, for the time being we chose the latter option,” he added.

In August 888 announced a short-term cost-cutting programme that will avoid additional losses that compelled the company to give up an interim dividend payment.  First-half pre-tax profit dropped by 43% to US$8.4m (£5.4m) in the first six months up and till June, from US$14.9m the previous year.  During the mentioned period, Levy claims a downward spiral in the online poker market, movements of currency exchanges and the FIFA World Cup.

Levy told eGaming Review during the European iGaming Congress (EiG) in Copenhagen earlier this month that it had since partnered with a large poker affiliation site following 888’s relaunch of its Poker 6 product earlier this year, and that as a result its liquidity had soared 40% since August.

“The last couple of months we’ve launched Poker 6 and partnered with a teamed up with a huge poker affiliate, resulting in liquidity rise of 40%.  This can be ascribed to the new software implementation developed in-house,” said Levy, not will to disclose the name of the affiliate partner. “We’ll update our shareholders and those who find themselves in this market and let’s see what the net result is,” he added.

“We’re now number three with our new poker product and that includes ‘Stars and Tilt. We’ve gone up to around 1,200 players,” he added.

Levy said it is better not to over invest in our poker software for the time being; since Stars and Tilt are also seeing some fallout”, he added the core casino product of a number of VIPs had returned to the site and were depositing large sums. “The new product is hugely popular with our poker players.   It gives me great pleasure to read the positive feedback posted by our players,” said Levy.

The product split of 888’s was “approximately 50% casino, 25% bingo, 15% poker and 10% the rest”, indicating that the company is set to inform about changes to its sportsbook in November.

“Be on the lookout for changes in our sports-betting operation.  We need to up the ante in sports, this will soon change,” he said.

With regard to the ongoing investigation by Nevada regulators into Dragonfish’s B2B deal with US gaming giant Harrah’s, Levy said the company is “ still waiting for the right partner” from Nevada regulators and that its meticulous assessment procedure is taking longer than anticipated.