Bwin Party Merger
(June 2013- August 2014)
Background
Bwin.party Digital Entertainment is the world’s largest listed online gaming company, with revenues in 2013 of €652.4 million and 2,770 employees worldwide. The company resulted from the merger of bwin Interactive Entertainment AG and PartyGaming Plc, completed in March 2011. In 2015, it was purchased by GVC
The company creates its own real money online games and its own gaming platform, and is operational in several markets around the world. The go-to-market product lines are focused on Sports betting, Poker, and Casino games, all of which depend upon a common platform for basics such as player identification, account, wallet, and compliance.
The product development was distributed between Hyderabad, Vienna, Gibraltar, London, Stockholm, Kiev and Vinnytsia (both in Ukraine), and Sofia (Bulgaria) and Kluj (Romania).
I was hired in mid 2013 as Group Head Product Governance, with a primary focus of leading a lean and agile transformation of the company’s product and development organization.
Following the merger, the company had not, yet, settled on a common development approach, and the structures, cultures, technologies, and beliefs of the pre-merger companies were still largely intact. There were a number of cross-site technical and service dependencies, in particular from the game development sites in and many of the development sites depended upon remote product management. The lion’s share of development effort was often focused on modifying the code base to adapt to a specific new or recently changed market and regulatory environment, with tight time pressures and evolving requirements, creating the conditions for the “contract game” to be played between component-based development teams, project management, product management, marketing, and general management.
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- Bwin.party was formed from the merger of bwin Interactive Entertainment AG and PartyGaming Plc in March 2011.
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The strains over time, which had their roots in the organizational designs, resulted in a lack of trust, a substantial cultural rift that needed to be closed, especially between sites. Other areas of opportunity for improvement included:
- duplication from alternative (.NET vs. Java) platforms
- technical debt expressed in large backlogs of known defects
- inadequate and out-of-date development skills and build practices that were continuing to produce still more debt
- competitive concerns
- regulatory deadlines
- need for alignment in portfolio and product management on priorities and focus.
The key stated goals that motivated the change to an agile development approach were to:
- be able to release more frequently
- improve quality in product that is released
- shorten feature cycle time
- improve flow
My background before joining bwin.party, and the reason that I was hired, was that I had deep experience in lean and agile transformation programs. I had previously worked at both ThoughtWorks and Valtech, consulting firms known for their leadership in lean and agile delivery, transformation, coaching and training. At Valtech I led agile transformations for several of our large clients, including Alcatel-Lucent, Schneider Electric, and Michelin, and had the good fortune to work in depth with Craig Larman there. At ThoughtWorks I had management responsibility for the US West Coast, and for major clients who were customers of agile delivery and co-creation services. I am quite experienced in working with large, distributed and complex product development organizations in the process of transformation towards lean and agile, and the opportunity to lead this change at bwin.party was personally very motivating.
I worked closely with Craig Larman at Valtech, where he served as Chief Scientist and where I led Agile Services globally (among other roles), beginning in 2006 when I joined the Paris office. We worked together at Valtech India (in Bengaluru) to help develop applying Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) to offshore development, and very deeply together with Alcatel-Lucent, where I gained applied LeSS “Huge” training and coaching experience. I spent more than 3 years there teaching, coaching, and applying LeSS in the Fixed Access and Wireless product divisions at Alcatel-Lucent, and have also taught and coached LeSS at Schneider Electric and other large product companies.
Guy Duncan, who served as CTO of Valtech US while I was there and who then hired me at bwin.party in his role as the group CTO was one of the key sponsors of agile transformation at bwin.party, as well as a major direct contributor to change and innovation. His insights and leadership were important factors in our success, as was his support for LeSS.
Starting the LeSS Adoption
At bwin.party, I began by “going to gemba”, touring and observing the key sites of the company, meeting directly with the development teams and product managers at each major site who are involved in guiding, creating, testing, deploying, and supporting the products and gaming platform which the company operates. I also met with the executive sponsors, key stakeholders, product and development management and individuals throughout the organization in HR, client service, marketing, legal and finance, in order to try to understand the company structures, culture(s), and the group dynamics, and to plan our efforts. From experience, I know that it is essential to have both top down and bottom up support in a large adoption, to prepare for the sometimes hard change to come.
Larman and Vodde’s first two books on LeSS (the “Scaling Lean and Agile Development” series) were made required reading for a large population in product development, product management, and the leadership team, to provide a shared context and vocabulary for agile, lean, and LeSS. This was part of “step 0” in the LeSS adoption guide Getting Started: educate everyone.
I quickly ramped up a team of expert consultants, trainers and coaches, with a model of pairing external experienced and vetted coaches with a small internal team of coaches and trainers who had agile experience, who were motivated to help do the heavy lifting ahead, and who convinced me that they had the necessary mindset and skills to contribute. We worked primarily in pairs, with intensity and focus, by site and by product line.
From experience, I knew that we would need to provide intensive coaching support for each product’s management and teams over several months at each site, and that individual coaches rarely can support more than 4-5 teams each for these initial months. I also shared the LeSS adoption guide to to go “deep and narrow over broad and shallow” with one product line, rather than wide (and potentially superficially) with many at once. So we went “deep”, rather than “broad”, with most of our effort, while maintaining a communication effort at the corporate level and supporting broad transparency via webcasts, newsletters, and collaboration platforms.
While coaching style varies naturally as each person uses their personal wealth of experience in the context of their work, it is very important to align a coaching team on the approach we would take. I brought in two seasoned coaches who had worked with me at Alcatel-Lucent and who knew LeSS, XP practices and who had experience with DevOps, I engaged with an agile consulting company in Hyderabad that had a coach experienced with LeSS from Nokia Siemens Networks and several others willing to learn, and we engaged Craig Larman for a two week intensive workshop in Vienna, with both senior management and development teams. All coaches had to first read the first two LeSS books (from 2008 and 2010), and I personally interviewed and tested the knowledge of each coach to insure a high level of common understanding.
Innovation Games
I found an opportunity to work together with the executive team (CEO plus direct reports and heads of product and technology), whose support I know to be essential to an effective transformation. I asked Luke Hohmann, CEO of Conteneo and author of Innovation Games™ and someone I trust and have worked with several times in the past, to come in to facilitate a workshop to help set our portfolio strategy. We spent 3 days in a workshop in Gibraltar, poring over the forecast investments to be made, or not to be made, in the next 18 months, using Prune the Product Tree and Buy a Feature games, both in person and using the Conteneo digital platform. We successfully sharpened the focus and aligned the leadership team on upcoming key initiatives and their priorities, which provided needed input to sizing the forthcoming product organization that was designed according to LeSS. A secondary objective of this meeting was to increase the collaborative decision making capability at the top, trying to contribute to building a tighter team with shared vision, and to gain a shared understanding of the benefits of working collaboratively, visually and in an intensive workshop setting, and this objective was also satisfied.
Changing Structures, Roles, and Responsibilities
We worked on an ongoing basis with the executive sponsor team to agree on the main initial improvement goals of the transformation; given the size of the coaching team, we needed to select our initial site and product focus to get started. We decided to first work with the Sports product organization, queuing up Poker and Games to follow, in part because of Sport’s relatively greater experience with “Scrum”, to increase the odds of a first “success”, and in part because of the relatively high dependence of Poker and Games on the common platform, which was, itself, in need of very significant organizational and technical change which would take more time and delay our change. I wanted to focus in a part of the organization which could experience improved end-to-end delivery using lean and agile thinking, and which could subsequently have a strong impact on other parts of the organization by sharing experience and learning.
The pre-existing organization had an emphasis on site-specific hierarchy, with as many as 7 levels in some sites, and significant overhead, in particular in our largest development site, Hyderabad. None of the senior managers in this hierarchy in India were experienced with lean and agile methods, and certainly not with LeSS. They had some idea that change was coming, but were not ready for the extent and depth of change. There was significant resistance among some of the management team there. Within several months most existing management roles were eliminated, those remaining were focused on mentoring, coaching and continuous improvement, and most people found themselves within one of nearly 100 new self-designed and self-organizing cross-functional teams in a flat organization. Those who decided to leave the organization were well-treated and assisted in finding other opportunities.
Most teams were grouped into product and requirement areas, following the patterns of LeSS Huge.
The products varied widely in their number of teams, ranging from one to dozens of teams. In the products that adopted LeSS, no product had more than six teams working on a single backlog. For those products that adopted LeSS Huge, the number of requirement areas varied from two to five, with from two to six teams per requirement area and APO. Each product had one Product Backlog and one Product Owner. The Product Owners of all the products were part of a new Product organization (an evolution of the prior Product Management organization), and they were supported by Area Product Owners for the requirement areas. Naturally, there were also Scrum Masters, one for each two or three teams.
The creation of the new Product organization was the subject of much deliberation, and this organization took longer to establish than did the self-designing team formation. Active communities of practice were formed for scrum masters and automated functional testing, each of which had a nominal site lead (a part-time role).
“LeanOps” and Handling Technical Debt
As DevOps had become a strong interest area for the organization, a parallel and aligned initiative began to introduce DevOps thinking and practices. A workshop including people from each of our development sites was conducted in order to develop a Value Stream Map for our development processes by product line and for the platform. Non value-adding activity was targeted for elimination or reduction in order to shorten overall product development cycle time and to improve the value ratio. Particular attention was paid to reducing and finally eliminating the use of branches so that teams could work directly on the trunk, to automating the creation of environments that had previously been built and maintained manually, and to the reduction / elimination of defects that had accumulated over time. There was fairly painful deliberation over what organizational model to use for work related purely to technical debt reduction.
Strong advice was given and reinforced to use regular teams working in rotation in Kanban mode to resolve defects that made it outside of development Sprints, with a small triage group to route items and prioritize queues. Management felt very strongly that a persistent focus should be kept on technical debt reduction; the result was that some teams were placed temporarily into a separate “LeanOps” group. It was called “LeanOps” and not DevOps to avoid the impression of jumping onto the DevOps cargo cult bandwagon. DevOps – says the creators of the term – implies the elimination of a separate group, and ultimately you should not need to have a separate area for it. The LeanOps group was viewed a temporary (~6 month lifespan) group outside of the product organization, managed separately in terms of backlogs which were prioritized by LeanOps service owners reporting up to the CTO and the portfolio function.
As there were not enough deeply experienced functional and technical experts for all of the teams, in some cases individuals who were normally members of long-lived feature teams rotated in and out of the LeanOps teams. This particular pattern did not make the individuals involved at all happy; with the help of Scrum Masters, these teams moved towards a pattern with the whole team staying together and “pulling” defect items into their Sprints instead of having the team disrupted.
After several Sprints, a groundswell of self-determination led the Sports product organization to successfully propose that regular Scrum feature teams would stay together, and pull LeanOps work (bugs and other technical debts) into their Sprints, serving on rotation, usually working in Kanban mode on LeanOps items for 1-3 Sprints, returning after to working on regular new feature development from items prioritized directly by their Product Owner. Actually, this approach was the one originally suggested by Craig Larman, and it illustrates the point that oftentimes a group has to come to a conclusion through their own struggles and learning.
Over time, the portfolio function matured to permit dynamic rebalancing of a mix of technical debt reducing allocation and strategic new product initiative focus. Strong leadership and involvement in the transformation by the company’s chief strategist was critical for giving teams, managers, and the overall organization time to learn and improve, and to provide leadership for what was, and was not a priority to work on.
HR Challenges and Support
In any ambitious transformation I know of, there are bound to be problems, which is of course what makes this work appealing and interesting! The most intractable of these are usually people problems, and usually more painful the higher in the organization the people are. At bwin.party, I found that the surprisingly deep involvement and willingness to learn and change on the part of most of the senior team, who we directly coached and collaborated with, was an effective force. This change is especially difficult, as it requires critical and at times public self-evaluation, and is especially valuable, as it can help to renew the trust and dedication of employees.
The HR department in many organizations is under-leveraged in lean and agile transformation, and can be seen as a source of trouble by lean and agile coaches, in particular when a company is going through an intentional downsizing. To fault the HR department, however, is likely to misunderstand the economic reality of a company’s position; they are often foot soldiers, carrying out a mandate given to them to control costs. Clearly, we would mostly like to be able to grow out of the economic problems that lead to cost cutting, but this often does not happen, or not fast enough. The problem presented by a difficult economic situation and a strategic decision to focus the company’s activities more narrowly geographically created an opportunity to revisit site strategy and the qualities that we sought both individually and organizationally.
Informed in part by lean thinking, we achieved some cost savings through reducing the number of sites, and substantially more by a reduction in headcount.
Our HR leadership became a very powerful source of lean and agile leadership, and the agile transformation of HR, itself, became a coached and trained initiative to produce self-organizing, cross functional HR teams, co-located at each major site, with a reduction of management overhead and a flattening of hierarchy. This change of a service organization, while not the traditional product development organization that is the focus of LeSS, led to a more effective cultural change and an organization better able to nurture the development of agile leadership.
Some Outcomes
Nearly 18 months into the transformation, it is possible to look back at what we have achieved:
- Feature time-to-market has been reduced
- Ability to release frequently has been increased
- Technical debt has been reduced
- Reactivity to portfolio prioritization is much improved
- Work-in-Progress has been reduced, and projects can be started and stopped faster
- Morale is strongly improved within and between teams
- Trust between sites is improved
- The dispersion of development over many sites has been reduced
- We share a common language, product cadence and priorities
- Global product and technical leadership is visible
- Site and organizational-level impediments are made visible and worked on by leadership
- Innovation games have become a common tool for people to use at each site, and the online games have proven useful for large scale distributed retrospectives, feature prioritization and problem identification and resolution
The change at bwin.party has been due to the individual efforts of the people at all levels, including a substantial number of new leaders and long term contributors. The company is determined to continue to improve continuously, and to strive to provide cutting edge digital entertainment to players and partners in the markets that it serves.
The lean and agile transformation we have undergone helps to make bwin.party a stronger, more flexible and more viable competitor, and I believe that it has been well worth doing.
Coordinates: 36°08′33″N5°21′31″W / 36.142633°N 5.358695°W
Type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
ISIN | GI000A0MV757 |
Industry | Online gaming |
Predecessor | Bwin PartyGaming |
Successor | GVC Holdings |
Founded | 2011 |
Headquarters | Suite 711, Europort, Gibraltar |
Revenue | €611.9 million (2014)[1] |
€(97.9) million (2014)[1] | |
€(94.3) million (2014)[1] | |
Website | www.bwinparty.com |
bwin.party Digital Entertainment was an online gambling company, formed by the March 2011 merger of PartyGaming plc and bwin Interactive Entertainment AG. Formerly the world's largest publicly traded online gambling firm,[2] it was best known for its online poker room PartyPoker, World Poker Tour and its sports betting brand bwin (officially styled bwin).
The company was headquartered in Gibraltar and quoted on the London Stock Exchange. PartyGaming Plc was founded in 1997 with the launch of Starluck Casino. Prior to passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 by the U.S. Congress, the firm was the world's largest online poker brand, based on cash game revenue and number of players. Its market share has fallen since then, but it remains the third largest online poker room in the world, behind PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.[3]
The new company became the world's largest publicly traded online gaming firm in 2010, 48.4% owned by existing PartyGaming shareholders and 51.6% by bwin shareholders. The merged company was listed on the London Stock Exchange, with joint CEOs Norbert Teufelberger and Jim Ryan.[4]
Following a protracted bidding process between 888 Holdings and GVC Holdings, Bwin.Party confirmed on 4 September 2015 that it had accepted GVC's bid for £1.1 billion. The transaction was completed on 1 February 2016.
History[edit]
Party Gaming and Bwin merged on 31 March 2011. The rumors of a planned Bwin and Party merger began in November 2009, but were not confirmed until a joint statement was issued 26 August 2010.[4] In December 2010 shareholders were sent a 478-page document with details and an outline of planned merger. On 28 Jan 2011 the merger was approved by shareholders and then completed on 31 March 2011.
In October 2012, bwin announced the sale of its leading online poker network, Ongame, to Amaya Gaming Group in a deal worth up to €25 million.[5]
In November 2013 it was announced that bwin.party had applied for an online gaming licence for the state of New Jersey in July, and on 8 November had been awarded a transactional waiver by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement allowing it to participate in the online gaming market in the state, prior to a full licence being granted. The group launched both poker and casino games under the land-based casino licence of its New Jersey partner, Borgata Casino, the launch included both Borgata's and its own brands, including partypoker.com.[6] By the end of December, the new partypoker site had acquired 50% of the cash game traffic in New Jersey.[7]
Following a protracted bidding process between 888 Holdings and GVC Holdings, Bwin.Party confirmed on 4 September 2015 that it had accepted GVC's bid for £1.1 billion.[8] The transaction was completed on 1 February 2016,[9] as indicated by cancellation of LSE traded shares on 2 February 2016.[10]
Products and services[edit]
Sports betting[edit]
Sports bets were the core business at bwin, with a sports betting lineup including more than 90 different sports; the principal customer interest is soccer. In order to boost bwin's presence in the UK football betting market, the company launched bwinbetting.com in 2011. Other sports included all popular ball-related sports, US sports as well as all major winter sports and motorsports ranging from Formula 1 to MotoGP. 'Exotic' sports such as roller hockey, futsal and darts were also included in the daily lineup. Customers could also find odds on a range of events outside of sports. These included bets on politics and entertainment such as the Oscars, talent shows, the Eurovision Song Contest and 'Miss' events.[11]
Poker[edit]
The following types of games were offered at bwin Poker: Texas Hold'em, Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo and Five-card draw, plus house variations like Double (three hole cards, choose two, halfway between Hold'em and Omaha). In terms of stakes, users could choose between Fixed Limit, Pot Limit or No Limit tables. A 'play money' version of the games was also available for users to try out for free. bwin offered poker tournaments, both Sit & Go and scheduled, and cash games (ring games). Sit & Go tournaments began as soon as the table was completely occupied. Scheduled tournaments began at a specified time and allowed for higher numbers of participants and the highest prize pools. In cash games the players could join and leave whenever they wanted. bwin Poker could be played using the Mac OS X Poker Client, the Windows Poker Client, the Java Poker Client or the Poker app for Android or the iPhone. The Mac and Windows version offered an extensive selection of features such as statistics and a mini-table function. The Java client was platform-independent as it was a browser-based solution. In January 2011, bwin launched a dedicated Poker app for the iPhone to allow real money poker. This was followed in July 2011 by a similar application for Android-based devices. The mobile client allowed customers to play cash games on their mobile phones. Both apps were restricted to limited territories as permitted by local laws.[12]
PokerRoom.com[edit]
PokerRoom.com was an online poker cardroom founded in 1999. Licensed by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, PokerRoom offered both play and real money formats. Tournaments and ring games were available in both web-browser and download client platforms, with support for both Macintosh and Linux. PokerRoom was one of the first online poker sites to provide multi-language support, and catered to Danish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, and Swedish speakers. These languages were accessed via 'regional sites', many of them showing local sponsoring for the selected region. After 10 years of operation, bwin announced the closure of PokerRoom.com on 14 April 2009.[13] It was relaunched in 2012 but shut down again on 19 February 2013.[14]
Bingo[edit]
Following the acquisition of Cashcade in 2009, bwin.party took control of a B2C portfolio of online bingo brands including Foxy Bingo, PartyBingo and Cheeky Bingo. Cashcade was the first company to promote online bingo to a mass market via television advertising and was first to develop the 'free bingo' concept to attract new customers. Bwin began offering bingo at the end of December 2009 when its Italian subsidiary, Gioco Digitale, launched bingo as the first authorised Italian private online gaming operator.[15]
Casino games[edit]
bwin offered more than 100 games, ranging from classics such as roulette or blackjack to slot machines and casino tournaments. The casino has a longstanding tradition at bwin: In 2001, it was introduced as a second product, after sports betting.[16] The biggest ever casino jackpot win happened in 2014 when an individual won a little over 6 million Euros.
Soft games[edit]
bwin offered more than 60 games divided into the categories of Fortune Games, Skill Games, Mini Games and 'ParaDice', as well as Backgammon. This was the product group with the biggest potential for innovation and expansion on the market.[17]
Legal Status[edit]
As the global legal framework for internet gambling is a complicated mix of laws and regulations, bwin's situation varied depending on the country concerned. Recently, Italy extended its online licences to include poker tournaments, and countries such as Denmark and Spain announced their intention to permit private operators access to their markets under stringent conditions and controls. On the other hand, other countries maintain a state monopoly on internet gaming, or ban it completely.
On 15 September 2006, Norbert Teufelberger and Manfred Bodner were arrested at a press conference in La Turbie, France, for allegedly breaking French gambling laws.[18] After an investigation, a judge released them three days later. When France opened their market for private online gaming in June 2010, bwin became the first operator there.
Bwin Party Merger Meaning
In February 2013, the Australian Communications and Media Authority referred the Bwin arm of bwin.party to the Australian Federal Police for contraventions of the Interactive Gambling Act. The Act prohibits gambling companies from providing 'interactive' gambling services to those in Australia. Penalties for each breach, which can be for each day, are $220,000 for individuals and $1.1 million for corporations.
Sponsorship[edit]
Bwin recently sponsored football giants Real Madrid, A.C. Milan and Bayern Munich and more recently Olympique de Marseille.[19] In October 2010, Bwin announced a sponsorship for the upcoming three football seasons in which it would be the title sponsor of the Taça de Portugal, named the 'Bwin Cup'.[20] Italy's second tier, Serie B, has already been re-branded 'Serie bwin' after a two-year sponsorship deal was signed in July 2010.
On 16 August 2012, bwin announced it was entering into a digital partnership with Manchester United to become the club's official online gaming and betting partner.
Bwin Party Merger Group
In the past, many other top events in the international and local sports world were supported by the corporation. Bwin also sponsored the Portuguese first football league (bwinLIGA) and has been partner to clubs such as Juventus and Werder Bremen.[21]
Bwin cooperated with the International Basketball Association (FIBA) and has sponsored the European and World Basketball Championships since 2006. A second basketball sponsorship is Euroleague Basketball. Bwin's marketing and media rights agreement for Euroleague events expired in June 2014.
In the area of motorsport, the company was one of the main sponsors of the MotoGP series. In 2012, it was the title sponsor of the races in Jerez and GP in Brno and official partner of the Misano, Mugello and Silverstone. In December 2011, bwin announced it would be extending its Moto GP sponsorships through 2013.
In addition, Bwin organised numerous poker events both online and offline. One of the biggest regular online tournaments was the ChampionChip. Special poker tournaments like the Weekly Country Showdown or the Bwin Dailies offered a range of tournaments adjusted to country specifics and buy-in levels. Periodically, there were launched new types and variations of Sit & Go's. Also, several online qualifiers the Bwin user could qualify for offline events like the World Series of Poker (WSOP), the Aussie Millions and events on the World Poker Tour. For 'poker newbies', Bwin offered the Rookie Challenge where a new poker player had the chance to climb up several stages for free to earn real money tickets.
The company faced some opposition in Europe over sponsorship of sports, especially football. In 2006, the German city of Bremen banned its top football club, Werder Bremen, from carrying the Bwin logo on its shirts.[22]
Bwin Party Merger News
In January 2014, the company announced major sponsorship deals with the New Jersey Devils and Philadelphia 76ers. The combined deals included major advertising to the fans of both teams and the creation of the Dream Seat Series, which was a series of online poker tournaments offering ticket packages to winners and other prizes to runners-up before every home game.[23]
References[edit]
- ^ abc'Preliminary Results 2014'. Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment. Retrieved 25 March 2015.
- ^Blitz, Roger (31 March 2011). 'Gaming merger aims to outplay US rivals'. Financial Times. Retrieved 3 April 2011.
- ^Poker Scout Online poker traffic rankings
- ^ ab'Gambling firms Partygaming and Bwin reveal merger plan'. BBC News. 29 July 2010. Retrieved 29 July 2010.
- ^4-traders (1 October 2012). 'Bwin.party Digital Entertainment Plc : Sale of Ongame to Amaya Gaming Group Inc'. 4-traders.
- ^Sandle, Paul and Goodman, David ( 8 Nov 2013) Gaming group bwin.party granted New Jersey online licence reuters.com
- ^Jones, Nick (20 December 2013) PartyPoker Claims 50% of New Jersey Market pokerfuse.com
- ^'Online betting company Bwin accepts GVC takeover bid'. BBC News. 4 September 2015. Retrieved 6 September 2015.
- ^Cook, David (5 January 2016). 'It's a date: BwinParty confirms the day GVC will take the reins'. Gambling Insider. Retrieved 10 January 2016.
- ^'LSE Share cancellation announcement'. Retrieved 10 February 2016.
- ^Factsheet: bwin Sport BetsArchived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 9 April 2010
- ^Factsheet: bwin PokerArchived 21 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 9 April 2010
- ^bwin Announces PokerRoom.com Shutdown, 4flush.com, 15 April 2009. Retrieved 20 April 2009.
- ^'Pokerroom Closes'. Recentpoker.com. 20 February 2013. Archived from the original on 20 May 2013. Retrieved 23 March 2013.
- ^'Bingo'. bwinparty.com. Retrieved 25 November 2014.
- ^Factsheet: bwin CasinoArchived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 9 April 2010
- ^Factsheet: bwin GamesArchived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved 9 April 2010
- ^David Gow. 'Online gambling bosses arrested in France'. The Guardian. Retrieved 25 March 2015.
- ^Bwin new sponsor of the Olympique de Marseille. Site de paris sportifs.
- ^Bwin seal sponsorship of Portuguese Liga Cup. Retrieved 8 November 2010.
- ^Factsheet: bwin Sport MarketingArchived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
- ^'Werder Bremen to Appeal Betting Firm Sponsor Ban in Court'. DW.DE. Retrieved 25 March 2015.
- ^'Devils, 76ers strike sponsorship deal with gaming website partypoker.com'. NJ.com. Retrieved 25 March 2015.