CARLOS POKER SOLD TO UNIBET
| Date | December 2007 |
| Price | $109,570,0002 |
| Assets | MariaBingo, Bingo.se, Maria Casino & Carlos Poker. |
| Buyer |  |
| Status | Poker room closed and migrated with Unibet. |
| Software | Yes (Bingo software) |
| Success |  |
Maria Holdings with Carlos Poker & Maria Bingo was sold to Unibet for a staggering amount of $109,570,000. Carlos Poker was at the time generating $2 million in monthly gross revenues however the real assets were the bingo brand & bingo platform.
We do not cover 'the history of online bingo' hence we will not go into details about the value of the bingo room. We have reasons to believe that the price paid was too high but only persons with insider knowledge would be able to reveal whether it was worth well over $100m.
For the first nine months of 2007, total gross winnings revenue for Unibet Group plc was GBP 59 million (SEK 773 million) and the operating profit was GBP 16.5 million (SEK 216 million).1
"With this acquisition we will strengthen our position in the Nordic region as well as within the fast growing online bingo market. Unibet is today the leading private gaming company among men, and with this acquisition we will also be leading among women", says Petter Nylander, CEO of Unibet Group plc.2
Carlos Poker was banned from the iPoker network two years after the purchase. The poker room was mainly generating its revenues from illegal rake back deals. Playtech and iPoker went to war with the skins on the network offering deals in late 2008 which resulted in NoIQ's exit as well as CarlosPoker.
CarlosPoker announced it would be closing in the summer 2012. The poker room which moved from iPoker to Microgaming migrated the room with Unibet a trend often seen when a sports book acquirers a poker room.
1 Unibetgroupplc.com 3 December, 2007
2 ibid