CLOSE RELATIONSHIP IS NOT A MERGER

18 January 2008

Two Austrian entities work closely but remain seperate


The relationship between Casinos Austria and Austrian Lotteries was clarified this week by Casinos General Director Karl Stoss in response to rumours that the companies were about to merge. In his clarification, Stoss revealed that the partners plan to set up an online poker room in the near future using technology bought from an unidentified supplier in Sweden.

The new online poker would be set up on the Win2day.at website, hoping to benefit from the extraordinary boom experienced in regional poker playing over the past year. Online poker bets will be limited to Euro 800 a week per individual player in an effort to reduce the risk of problem gambling.

Stoss dismissed rumours about a formal merge with Austrian Lotteries, saying: "We are not thinking about a merger but only considering the possibility of increasing the bundling of some of our functions." He added that Casinos Austria would consider selling its headquarters in Vienna's first district and moving it to the lottery headquarters in the third district.

Casinos Austria International and its partners currently operate 51 landbased casinos in 17 countries and 13 shipboard casinos. Its parent company, Casinos Austria AG, operates the 12 casinos in Austria. Together, the Group's 76 casinos feature over 1 100 gaming tables and 10 800 slot machines.

Win2day.at is the multichannel gaming platform run jointly by Austrian Lotteries and Casinos Austria AG. Accessible via PC or mobile phone, this highly popular site was launched in February 2003 to replace the existing WebClub.at, which had already been online since 1998. The skite offers players a choice of traditional Austrian lottery games and a selection of different online casino games.

Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa