Caesar's Purchase WSOP Mobile Poker App

The worlds largest gaming company Caesar's has made the purchase of the World Series of Poker mobile application. Released in a press release this week, Caesar's Interactive, the online division of the company now owns the rights of the mobile app, which already has 6 million downloads. The companies Playtika division will operate the application and the press release stated that the app enables it to, "expand its presence in free-to-play social and mobile gaming." The WSOP app is optimized for both iOS and Android operating systems and is available on Facebook, Amazon Kindle too. It's a good time to acquire the app with the WSOP in full swing in Las Vegas and all sorts or records being broken, however that had little to do with the timing of the deal, and the press release continued, "The catalyst for the deal was the acquisition of certain World Series of Poker game assets and intellectual property from Electronic Arts." The terms of that deal meant all ownership rights of its WSOP games were transferred to Caesar's.

There are still many questions to be answered regarding the worth and the real dollar value of social gaming and although most larger companies now consider it to be a 'must have' part of their overall strategy there are still plenty of observers that see it as a little costly. There have been some huge sums paid for social games development companies over the few years, with in fact one of the largest of those deals being Caesar's purchase of Playtika. Other social gaming companies are not fairing too well at present and the move into the real money market by social gaming giant Zynga has yet to bear fruit. Shares in Zynga were down again this week and after office closures and redundancies, as well as a profit warning it looks that they will take a while in rebuilding.