Scientific Games acquires 10.72% of NYX Gaming Group

December 21, 2017 — Fusion DigiNet

Scientific GamesScientific Games Corporation has acquired ownership of 11,600,000 ordinary shares of NYX Gaming Group Limited, representing approximately 10.72% of the issued and outstanding ordinary shares of NYX. The acquired shares were purchased through the facilities of the TSX Venture Exchange at prices ranging from CAD$2.22 to CAD$2.35 per share, representing an aggregate purchase price of CAD$27,054,565. The transaction will be financed with cash on hand and debt. It represents a 112 percent premium to NYX’s closing stock price on September 19, 2017; and the transaction is expected to be accretive to earnings and cash flow in the first year and leverage neutral at closing.

NYX is a digital gaming provider with a staff of more than 1,000 employees globally, including more than 600 engineers and has more than 200 unique customers.

The award-winning NYX OGS™ (Open Gaming System), which allows licensees to leverage the best-of-breed, multi-vendor casino content from around the world, is acknowledged to be the industry’s market-leading gaming offering. From its own studios and a broad partner network of innovative third party suppliers, NYX offers customers the widest portfolio of content available, with access to more than 2,000 game titles, via OGS™.

Kevin Sheehan, Scientific Games’ President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “This important transaction creates a global gaming and lottery powerhouse. Scientific Games will be a stronger industry leader offering one of the broadest end-to-end portfolios of engaging content, innovative technologies and digital products and services across gaming and lottery”.

USA, Las Vegas, NV

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Merkle’s Dentsu Aegis Network acquires DWA digital media and marketing agency

December 19, 2017 — Fusion DigiNet

Dentsu Aegis NetworkDentsu Aegis Network has acquired the global B-to-B digital media and marketing agency, DWA. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Established in 1996, DWA applies expertise in ad-tech, real-time insight, and management decision support to a range of integrated, global media including Programmatic, Search, Social, and Demand Generation.

The move will expand the B-to-B offering at people-based marketing agency, Merkle, increasing existing capabilities and offering brands in the technology and B-to-B sectors greater sophistication, integrated technology, data, creativity, and performance marketing. The new business will be branded “DWA, a Merkle company”.

David Williams, President and CEO of Merkle, said, “There’s a growing group of enterprise level, B-to-B and technology businesses, all moving at breakneck pace to adopt the best advertising solutions and platforms. DWA’s client list reflects a clear early-mover advantage. The shift toward people-based marketing, led by Merkle, is as relevant in B-to-B as it is elsewhere. This acquisition will strengthen our ability to deliver those capabilities for B-to-B clients, at scale.”

USA, New York, NY & San Francisco, CA

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Penn National Gaming to Acquire Pinnacle Entertainment for $2.8BN

December 18, 2017 — Fusion DigiNet

Penn National GamingPenn National Gaming has entered an agreement to acquire Pinnacle Entertainment for approximately $2.8 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Pinnacle shareholders will receive $20.00 in cash and 0.42 shares of Penn National common stock for each Pinnacle share, which implies a total purchase price of $32.47 per Pinnacle share. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies and is expected to close in the second half of 2018.

Pinnacle owns and operates 16 gaming and entertainment facilities in 11 jurisdictions across the United States. Following the acquisition of Pinnacle and the planned divestiture of four of its properties to Boyd Gaming Corporation, Penn National will have greater operational and geographic diversity and operate a combined 41 properties in 20 jurisdictions throughout North America. The transaction is expected to generate $100 million in annual run-rate cost synergies following integration and is anticipated to be immediately accretive to free cash flow in the first year.

Timothy J. Wilmott, Chief Executive Officer of Penn National Gaming, commented, “The combined company will benefit from enhanced scale, additional growth opportunities and best-in-class operations, creating a more efficient integrated gaming company. Going forward, we will have the financial and operational flexibility to further execute on our strategic objectives, while maintaining our track record of industry-leading profit margins and generating significant cash flow to reduce leverage over time.”

USA, Wyomissing, PA & Las Vegas, NV

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Catena Media acquires Squawka.com and related assets from Squawka Ltd for £1M

December 14, 2017 — Fusion DigiNet

Catena MediaThe online performance marketing company Catena Media has acquired Squawka.com and related assets from Squawka Ltd. Squawka is a high-volume traffic global football news site with a Daily Fantasy Sports section in beta version. The main site currently attracts around 4 million users per month, and has around 800,000 followers on Twitter.

The purchase price amounts to a one-time upfront cash payment of GBP 1 million (approximately EUR 1.1 million). The acquisition is expected to generate annual sales of approximately EUR 2 million with an estimated 60% margin.

Henrik Persson Ekdahl, Acting CEO of Catena Media, said, “We see potential for Squawka as a high-volume traffic site with a global audience, to which we look forward to implementing an affiliation business model. The company has invested in automatic data feeds for their user-friendly graphical interfaces, which is something we aim to integrate into other Catena Media products.”

Malta, Ta’ Xbiex & UK, London

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Keywords Studios acquires games developer Sperasoft

December 13, 2017 — Fusion DigiNet

keywords

Keywords Studios, an international technical services provider to the global video games industry, has acquired Russian game development business Sperasoft from the founders Igor Efremov, Alexei Kudriashov and Mark Rizzo.
The total consideration is $27 million. Keywords Studios are paying $22 million in cash, $1 million of which is deferred until the first anniversary of the acquisition. The remainder will be paid through the issue of new shares, which will be issued to the sellers on the first anniversary of the acquisition.

 

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Sperasoft provides game development, art creation and software engineering services to video game developers and publishers around the world from its production studios in St Petersburg and Volgograd, Russia and Krakow, Poland. Founded in 2004, Sperasoft employs 400 software engineers and artists. The company offers a full range of services for initial game development as well as developing games in live operations.

Andrew Day, Chief Executive Officer of Keywords Studios, said, “The acquisition of Sperasoft provides us with an entry point into co-development, positioning us as a strategic partner to games developers at the early stages of the games development lifecycle. As games are becoming bigger and are higher definition, game developers are increasingly relying upon co-development arrangements with companies like Sperasoft to provide them with broader capability to develop both initial games and additional content and features post launch.”

USA, Santa Clara, CA & Ireland, Dublin

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Certain Acquires Gather Digital, Investing in the Next Generation of Mobile Event Applications

December 8, 2017 — Fusion DigiNet

CertainCertain, the leader in enterprise event automation, today announced it has acquired Gather Digital, a mobile event application suite for enterprises, associations and educational institutions. With this acquisition, Certain is further strengthening its mobile development and data integration capabilities, taking advantage of the experience that Gather Digital’s extended team brings and offering customers unprecedented insight into the mobile journey to determine the event attendee’s true sentiments. The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Gather Digital creates native and mobile web event applications with integrated personalized agendas, event content, live polling, surveys, continuing education credits, group meetings, lead retrieval and gamification. Gather Digital’s engagement apps allow the company’s clients to leverage mobile as a channel to capture intent throughout events, and build deeper relationships with their event attendees. Their customers include five of the world’s largest financial services companies, the nation’s leading pharmaceutical/ life science organization and premier technology and Fortune 1000 corporations. With the acquisition, Certain will continue to grow its U.S. presence and tap the North Carolina Research Triangle’s burgeoning tech hotbed for sales, marketing and product talent.

“Certain is focused on enabling our customers to gather the most relevant data from event attendees to drive better business results from events,” said Peter Micciche, CEO of Certain. “By acquiring Gather Digital and the impressive mobile capabilities the team has developed, we’re continuing to invest in our data strategy – and the people at the forefront of delivering innovative technology for world class enterprises.”

USA, San Francisco, CA & Chapel Hill, NC

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CloserStill acquires Online Educa Berlin

December 6, 2017 — Fusion DigiNet

CloserStillCloserStill Media is to acquire Online Educa Berlin, a cross-sector conference on technology-

supported learning and training, from ICWE GMbH for an undisclosed sum. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Founded in Berlin, Germany in 1995, OEB is an annual international conference on technology-supported learning and training (e-learning), welcoming over 2,000 delegates from across the corporate, education and public sectors, and including an exhibition featuring more than 80 international Edtech companies and institutions.

The acquisition will complement CloserStill’s existing event brand, Learning Technologies, which has events in Paris and London.

Commenting on the acquisition and the launch plans for Learning Technologies Germany in 2018 alongside OEB, CloserStill’s learning group director, Mark Penton, said: “We are genuinely excited to bring the highly respected OEB event into our family of market-leading events and to work with its founder Rebecca Stromeyer.

“We see a significant opportunity to evolve OEB into one of Europe’s most important learning events with the introduction of our Learning Technologies brand into the heart of the European marketplace.”

Germany, Berlin, UK, London

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Zeta Global acquires Disqus

December 5, 2017 — Fusion DigiNet

Zeta GlobalThe data-driven marketing technology innovator Zeta Global has acquired the audience engagement platform Disqus. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Disqus powers an open and independent web of 4 million publishers including The Atlantic, Destructoid, Spoiler TV and TMZ. Since 2007, Disqus has focused on helping independent publishers build audiences through its audience development platform by giving publishers tools to interact with readers.

Combined with Zeta’s leading marketing platform, artificial intelligence and machine learning, the acquisition makes Zeta the only company able to offer personalised real-time marketing at scale on the open web.

David A. Steinberg, Zeta Global CEO, Chairman and Co-Founder, said, “We’re redefining the marketing technology space with actionable data, artificial intelligence that answers business problems and a marketing hub that serves as the nerve centre for data-driven marketers. Disqus extends and enhances this strategy. Marketers typically have to make tradeoffs between reaching engaged audiences on social platforms with massive reach and using tools that give them control and access to granular targeting capabilities. Disqus strengthens Zeta’s ability to offer the best of both worlds with the scale, visibility and performance marketers have been asking for.”

USA, New York, NY & San Francisco, CA

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Unity Technologies Acquires Game Hosting Division of Multiplay from GAME Digital, PLC

November 28, 2017 — Fusion DigiNet

Unity Technologies Inc.Unity Technologies creator of the world’s most popular creation engine that reaches nearly three billion devices worldwide, announced today that the company has entered into a definitive acquisition to acquire Multiplay Ltd and its game hosting business from GAME Digital plc for £19M GBP.

Multiplay is a leading specialist in online game server hosting. Multiplay’s hybrid cloud technology powers some of the world’s largest online games, automatically scaling to meet global player demand. Multiplay’s hybrid approach blends a global network of bare metal servers with the flexible burst capacity from the leading cloud providers and offers a 24/7 team of gaming specialists for round-the-clock monitoring and support to players.

GAME Digital plc comprises three divisions: Retail, Events and esports and Digital Solutions, and delivers for the gaming communities of the UK, Spain and elsewhere. The events business and its associated IP’s will remain with GAME.

John Riccitiello, CEO of Unity Technologies, said, “The team at Multiplay have created scalable multiplayer technology that gives all game creators, from indies to AAA studios, the ability to create performant experiences that can serve hundreds of thousands of players at once. We welcome the Multiplay team to the Unity family.”

USA, San Francisco, CA, England, Southampton

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PenskeMedia acquires FashInvest

November 27, 2017 — Fusion DigiNet

PensPenske Media CorporationkeMedia Corporation and its subsidiary Fairchild Media today announced the acquisition of FashInvest, the innovator in connecting the fashion-tech, fashion, retail, and branded consumer goods sectors with the finance and investment sectors. This acquisition follows Penske Media and its subsidiary Fairchild Media’s acquisition last month of Sourcing Journal, a media brand for global executives focused on the sourcing and manufacturing industries. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

FashInvest, known for being “where fashion meets finance,” began as a series of educational industry events in 2009 and has rapidly evolved to now be a leading global media resource. FashInvest’s daily online news posts, reports, and exclusive interviews on the emerging fashion tech and fashion arenas have established it as a news authority for a growing number of fashion-tech and fashion entrepreneurs seeking the latest news on who has received funding, who is providing the funding, and what strategies are attracting financing.

“FashInvest has tapped into the vital intersection of finance and fashion—a business that has been built over the last decade on discovering and developing emerging fashion and retail brands and their access to capital markets.  Fairchild Media has consistently been the leader in coverage of well-established global fashion brands, and with the acquisition of FashInvest the opportunity to deepen our coverage of emerging companies, start-ups, and the financial institutions (VC’s, Private Equity, etc.) that are shaping the future fashion industry is dramatically enhanced,” said PMC Chairman and CEO Jay Penske.

USA, New York, NY, Wilmington, DE

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