Playtica Holding Corporation, a renowned developer of great social casino games, is filing paperwork for an IPO (initial public offering) in the United States. Supposing the Securities and Exchange Commission approves it, the shares of Playtica Holding Corp will be available at the beginning of 2021 or later this year.
The details in the initial public offering are not clear at the moment. However, reliable sources have claimed that part of what is in the IPO is that Playtica could be ready to sell one billion dollars in shares, most likely at a price that puts the company’s worth at nearly 10 billion dollars.
These are interesting times in the world of US gambling to see a social casino gaming firm making such a step. The US market for real money gambling online is expanding fast. The social casino services and products existing or introduced in the market are considered adjacent industries. The entry of Playtica into the US gambling market could boost the industry, which is already doing so well. United States stock markets, especially NASDAQ, are really hot at the moment as the industry continues to recover from the coronavirus.
Coming back to US Shores
Currently, Playtica is headquartered in Israel, but its owner is a popular Chinese investor company or group comprising Yunfeng Capital and GNG (Giant Network Group).
Social Casino suit
Playtica Corp has also dominated weeks ago for less favorable reasons. It was among the companies that were accused of having play casino money products that constitute illicit gambling. The companies settled lawsuits recently in Washington.
Ronald Leighton, the judge in charge of the case, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, who argued that if people cannot play the game without pay money chips, they only mean that they constitute something of value. Caesars Slots and other social casino applications dole out a considerable amount of free chips regularly. But later, they try to entice players to use real money to purchase more so that they can keep playing even after running out of their initial supply.
To completely settle the lawsuit, Playtica ultimately paid 38 million dollars and committed to making some changes to the products it offers.
Lawsuits of such kind have become very common, particularly in industries that toy with the borders of what constitutes and do not constitute gambling. Now that Playtica has seen new opportunities connecting to the expanding gambling industry in the United States, the chances are that it will continue to find itself defending its products’ legality in courts as this is probably not going to be the last lawsuit to fight.
However, the company was owned by Caesars Entertainment in its early life. Later in 2011, Caesars Entertainment acquired the most shares, thereby gaining a controlling interest. At this time, it had just been around for one year. Caesars Entertainment later purchased the remaining interest of the company to become the sole owner. It later sold it for 4.4 billion dollars to Giant Network Group in 2016.
The change of proprietorship did not change the company from a western-facing one. Instead, it remains a conspicuous western-facing company with most of the offices spread across the European countries. Caesars still has a tight relationship with the company, with the play money WSOP poker application and Caesars Slots being some of the top products of Playtica.
The motivation behind the IPO might be that the current owners of Playtica see the US gambling market and the industry as promising and favorable. At the same time, with the current ongoing iGaming expansion, the company is also likely to see many social gaming opportunities arising across the US markets.
