888Poker: 888 Holdings Purchase bwin.party for $1.8 Billion

888 Holdings have finally acquired bwin.party, after months and months of negotiations and wrangling involving some of 888poker’s staunchest rivals, like Amaya, the company behind PokerStars, which teamed up with GVC Holdings to bring a seemingly extremely valuable asset into the fold of the world’s largest online poker operation.

The value of the transaction was revealed to be some $1.8 billion and the move has offered 39.45p for every bwin.party share as well as a fraction of every new 888 share. Then interesting thing about the move was though that apparently the GVC offer was a more generous one than the 888 one, but the 888 deal offered more certainty to bwin.party shareholders.

Exactly what 888 stand to gain from the takeover is still up for debate: some think that the company will try to spin off bwin.party successful Studios division as a standalone business unit. What is certain though is that the company’s market share has skyrocketed on account of the deal: in the UK for instance, the combined market-share of the two companies is some 56%.