(Dragonfish DealJanuary 31, 2010)The online casino group 888 Holdings Plc has an independent B2B division that goes by the name of Dragonfish. This group is a supplier of online casino software to the various holdings, subsidiaries and affiliates. 888 Holdings was pleased to announce that Dragonfish had signed a deal with Lex Online Entertainment Limited, which is a subsidiary of Centric Multimedia SA. They are going to be providing them with online casino and poker software. The deal has them supplying their two brands with all of their online casino and poker software, as well as their fraud and risk management, customer support, e-payment processing, and back office technology. They will be launching in several different languages as well, which will really open them up to the online casino market. Linden Lab’s Second Life (SL) is a virtual world launched on June 23, 2003 where users, called Residents, can explore, socialize, interact and create and trade virtual property and services with each other through avatars. Second Life has become a phenomenon worldwide, generating around $35 million of business every month, and the deal struck will see Dragonfish provide electronic payments, fraud and customer support management services to the company which predicts $0.5billion of business this year alone.

They are currently focusing on the South and Eastern European market, as they know that right now they are one of the hot spots for online casino gambling. There are so many areas out there that are saturated within the online casino industry that they wanted to branch out to other territories that are ready to go. Centric Multimedia distributes multimedia and software and already has many investments in the online casino gambling industry. This online casino deal will expand their presence in the market, and give them a much stronger standing. Not only that but they can use their existing channels to market their new online casino sites through a new campaign. The deal, which ties revenue streams from Cashcade brands including Foxy, Think and Cheeky into the Dragonfish platform until May 2014, follows the widespread mooting of a possible move off the network by 888 rival Party Gaming following PartyGaming’s buy of Cashcade in July 2009.

Dragonfish managing director Gabi Campos said PartyGaming’s decision to keep Cashcade on Dragonfish (which also avoids the disruptive effect of moving the bingo operator’s players to another platform) reflected the strength of the Dragonfish bingo software and back-end.Cashcade is the largest bingo operator in the UK, and owns standalone networks Foxy Bingo, Cheeky Bingo, Think Bingo, Little Big Bingo, Bingo Scotland and Foxy Zero, which are all powered by Dragonfish. PartyGaming also recently relaunched its ITV Bingo website via Cashcade. Dragonfish has been instrumental in propping up 888 Holding’s recent quarterly results, and managed to post a 15% year on year increase in revenue in Q3 when the company’s overall revenue saw a decline of 10%. This was mostly due to a series of recent deals struck by Dragonfish, with big businesses, including Harrah’s Interactive Entertainment and South Africa’s Tsongo Sun Gaming group, as well as being involved in launching poker and gaming in the Balkans. Dragonfish-owner 888 tied Wink and Posh Bingo into the Dragonfish network by acquiring the rooms from owners Daub for £60m in December 2009.