Twin River is also set to launch a Bally branded sports betting site, takeover the Bally’s 3 online casino licenses in New Jersey and seek to close its acquisition of the Bally’s Atlantic City Casino over the coming months. Twin River has been putting in the hard yards to constructing a Bally’s Atlantic City Hotel & Casino deal and is rumored to have already made a $25 million acquisition offer.
Twin River has big ambitions
“These acquisitions represent a unique opportunity to continue executing on our expansion and diversification strategy at attractive valuation multiples,” explained George Papanier, President and Chief Executive Officer of Twin River.
“We see significant opportunities to create cross marketing connections for customers at multiple Twin River locations, and we look forward to applying our proven operating and integration approach to drive incremental revenues and cash flows.” Mr Papanier continued.
Soo Kim, Chairman of the Twin River Board of Directors, also said as the deal was announced, “This is a great deal for Twin River, and diversifies our business across eight states. It reaffirms our commitment to employees, customers and the communities in which we operate that Twin River will be stronger than ever. This is an opportunity for us to revive a brand that is synonymous with American gaming.”
The History & Future of Bally’s
Bally Manufacturing begun corporate life as a pinball manufacturing company back in 1932 and later in the 1930’s started building slot machines. By the time of the 1960’s, Bally’s became the largest and most powerful player in the slot manufacturing business. In the late 1970’s Bally launched into the operational side in Atlantic City opening Bally’s at the third casino to open in NJ’s answer to Vegas. Bally’s later merged with Hilton Hotels in the mid ‘90s to establish the largest casino company in the world at that time.
Despite having 3 online casino licenses to spare, Bally’s never resurfaced using the Caesars brand. Caesars was already committed to its own brand, and close licensed partnerships with Harrah’s and 888Casino.
Now Twin River has finalized the deal with Caesars to acquire Bally’s in New Jersey, Twin River has also announced deals with both theScore Bet and Australian online bookmaking company PointsBet. However, the two sports betting companies both already have New Jersey sportsbooks in the Garden State through their licenses with Monmouth Park Racetrack.
Clearly then, Bally’s has done deals with PointsBet and theScore Bet to make their first forays into the online casino sphere. That still gives Twin River one more license to either launch their own online casino brand in New Jersey, or possibly invite a big global player like Betway, for example, to take up their third license.
Another opportunity for Twin River could potentially be a “Bally’s” branded sports book with the third license. As discussed above, Caesars didn’t use the Bally’s brand for any of its online sportsbook options, so a loop hole has been left open for Twin River to take advantage of.
There are also rumors that the Twin Rivers corporate name could possibly change with company’s stock ticker to potentially change to something “more reflective” of the Bally’s brand, according to Kim, the Chairman of the Twin River Board.
