INTERVIEW MITCH GARBER
Even so, acquiring in the social space was not part of the Caesars masterplan, with Garber conceding that meeting a regulatory brick wall in real-money poker has forced him to diversify quicker than originally planned. “At the time we thought there would be legal online poker in 2009, maybe 2010. If you think back to 2008, social mobile – freemium gaming – did not exist. So it was certainly not supposed to happen this way. I like to think, though, that we didn’t really reprioritise our business plan; we became opportunistic. “The [Playtika] business came to pass, and casino-themed games became a category where you could make money so we seized the opportunity and found the right ?rst acquisition, which was Playtika, and now I think we’ve found the best second acquisition, which is Buffalo Studios and [the] Bingo Blitz [brand].” The purchase of Buffalo Studios – announced in late December 2012 and thought to be worth in the region of $140m – means CIE now boasts three of the top 12 most popular gambling and casino apps on Facebook according to analytics business Dystillr, with Slotomania (4th), Bingo Blitz (8th) and Caesars Casino (12th). Along with some smaller, unannounced deals adding social mobile development hubs in Belarus and Ukraine, the deal takes the number of CIE employees up to 400 from just 20 in 2010. Those ballooning ?gures are a striking indication of how Garber has refused to sit back and wait for realmoney online gambling to come back to the US. “Now that we’re building out the p ???????????????????????????????UL??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????t????????Q?????????????????????????????????????????q$???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????t(+?qQ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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