Bwin.Party runs games such as online poker.
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This $1.4B online gambling deal creates a new real-money gaming titan: 888 Holdings

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

888 Holdings agreed to buy Bwin.party Digital Entertainment for 898.3 million pounds ($1.4 billion) in cash and shares in a deal that will create a real-money online gambling giant.

The deal thwarts a previously announced takeover bid by GVC Holdings and Amaya, even though the 888 offer is actually lower than a 906.5 million pound bid by GVC. The two merging companies said the deal would be simpler given approvals required by regulators and taxation issues. Bwin.party shareholders will own about 48.9 percent of the combined company. Online gambling is estimated to be a $41 billion market in 2015, according to Statista.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.