International Game Technology buys Double Down Interactive for $500M
International Game Technology has acquired DoubleDown Casino developer Double Down Interactive for $500 million, made up of $250 million in cash, $85 million in retention payments for the next two years and a $165 million earnout payable over the next three years.
DoubleDown Casino started off in 2010 looking like another pretender to Texas HoldEm Poker’s crown as top casino/gambling-themed game, but rapidly scaled in 2011 to become one of the top games in the genre on Facebook. According to our AppData traffic tracking service, the game currently enjoys 4.7 million monthly active users and 1.3 million daily active users. The developer plans to release a mobile version in a matter of weeks. Read our review of the Facebook version here.
With Facebook potentially allowing real money gambling in certain parts of the world (like in the United Kingdom, where it’s legal), gambling-themed social games like DoubleDown are well-positioned to access a new audience segment that wants to play with real money. Games that already have established audiences may also be able to convert existing players that use only in-game currency to real money players, given that people are more likely to trust a developer they know rather than new social game developers that build games only for real money gambling.
We’ve contacted DoubleDown Interactive for additional information on the acquisition. A conference call is also being held for the media tomorrow morning. We’ll update this story as necessary.
January 12th, 2012 at 4:12 pm
Huge news. but IGT is not UK based: IGT is a huge US, NYSE-listed based casino software/hardware supplier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Game_Technology
January 12th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
Cheers.
January 15th, 2012 at 12:46 pm
[...] International Game Technology buys Double Down Interactive for $500M [...]
February 15th, 2012 at 7:58 am
[...] via gaming machine supplier IGT — which acquired social game developer DoubleDown Interactive earlier this year — and it has a firm grasp on how i-gaming revenue compares to what social games are [...]
April 5th, 2012 at 2:09 pm
[...] almost 900,000 DAU between August and September. The slowdown in growth seemed to occur just after DoubleDown Interactive was acquired in January by International Game Technology; over the past three months, the game’s gained [...]
May 1st, 2012 at 7:55 pm
[...] company. Caesars Entertainment spent $90 million on Slotomania developer Playtika while IGT spent $500 million on DoubleDown Interactive — and Slotomania was the larger game. Sure, casino games on Facebook see higher engagement [...]
May 11th, 2012 at 11:42 am
[...] again soon. The game showed high growth during the second half of 2011, but this has slowed since DoubleDown Interactive was acquired by International Game Technology in January. Since DoubleDown Casino doesn’t seem to be [...]
June 7th, 2012 at 4:14 pm
[...] 2011, and peaked at 1.5 million in March. DoubleDown Casino’s growth slowed down after DoubleDown Interactive was acquired by International Game Technology in January; if traffic doesn’t begin to significantly [...]
September 14th, 2012 at 1:01 pm
[...] been nine months since International Game Technology purchased Double Down Interactive. We recently sat down to talk to IGT VP of Emerging Business Robert Melendres to discuss the [...]
December 6th, 2012 at 5:15 pm
[...] in its existence, it’s been hovering around this point since December 2011. Ever since IGT purchased the developer earlier this year, the game’s traffic has been holding steady instead of moving up, though [...]