PartyGaming plans French marketing spend

French pari-mutuel betting operator PMU has recently launched a poker arm and is ramping up its marketing spend, which will also benefit PartyGaming in France due to the existing deal between the two operators, Weigold added.

Although bingo has been down quarter-on-quarter this year, PartyGaming said it remains confident of future growth. It launched bingo in Sweden two weeks ago on the Dragonfish platform and is planning to launch a bingo site in Italy in 2011.

Party’s merger partner Bwin also released its third quarter results, with gross revenues up 21.9% to 123.1 million from 101 million euros in the third quarter 2009. The Austria-based operator saw growth in all verticals except casino, with poker revenues up 43.5% to 33.2 million euros from 23.1 million euros due to acquisition of Gioco Digitale, the addition of Betfair to the Ongame poker network, a Bwin subsidiary, and its launch into France.

Casino revenues were down 9.8% to 16.3 million euros from 18.1 million euros last year, due to the termination of casino operations in France and Italy, it said. “It is expected that casino is one of the areas of synergy that will benefit from the planned merger with PartyGaming,” Bwin’s statement read.