MUMBAI: Fun Technologies Inc. has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, SkillJam Technologies Corporation has acquired WorldWinner.com, Inc. for $23 million. This acquisition further consolidates the company's leadership position in the fast-growing casual gaming market.
Based in Newton, Massachusetts, WorldWinner is a privately held company that specialises in online skill games. It hosts more than 10 million games and awards millions of dollars in prizes every month, with games in five categories: Card (Bridge, Spades), Word (Word Mojo), Arcade (SwapIt, Blockwerx), Strategy (Skillgammon, Cubis) and Sports (Pool, Polar Bowler). An average of 350,000 games are played on WorldWinner daily. For the 12 months, WorldWinner's unaudited financial statements showed revenue of $10.67 million.
SkillJam is a multi-channel provider of skill-gaming technology and solutions. It develops and distributes private-label gaming solutions for a broad network of partner destination sites in the US and abroad, including AOL, MSN's Zone.com, Virgin Games and Lycos. Through its skill-gaming website SkillJam.com, SkillJam offers a wide range of skill games to its over nine million registered users. SkillJam games are also offered over the internet, through wireless applications (mobile) and iTV (interactive television), and on stand-alone kiosks.
Over the short term, WorldWinner's products will continue to be offered on its website, http://www.worldwinner.com, but there will be some level of integration in the future with the SkillJam property.
Fun Technologies CEO Lorne Abony said, "The acquisition of WorldWinner is a significant strategic achievement for Fun Technologies. WorldWinner was until now our largest competitor and by consolidating the two businesses we will achieve significant operating efficiencies, leverage and synergies. Skill-gaming is in its infancy and we believe it makes tremendous sense to consolidate the sector in its early stages to capture market share, increase supplier concentration, enhance distribution and acquire customers at low cost per acquisition. The synergies that exist in merging SkillJam and WorldWinner are enormous, as the businesses are complementary in every way."
Fun Technologies president Rick Weil added that acquiring WorldWinner means leveraging economies of scale and significantly growing revenue. Further, Weil stated, "We will acquire millions of new non-overlapping customers, increase our liquidity and offer customers a variety of new online games. We also intend to move quickly to take advantage of the cost synergies which exist in redundant operations."
WorldWinner president and CEO Stephen Killeen said, "We are proud to be a part of this merger with Fun Technologies. The consolidation of the two organizations will result in a global skill-gaming powerhouse."
