Canada’s Intertain Group has acquired the rights to the Parlay Group’s bingo software and the Bingo.ca domain in preparation for the launch of a Canadian-facing free-play online bingo offering.
Intertain says it struck an all-cash C$2.8m deal to acquire Parlay’s bingo software source code. Intertain will also have access to the Ontario-based Parlay’s back office system and HTML5 mobile bingo products, and Intertain has also licensed casino, mini and side games.
Intertain CEO John Kennedy Fitzgerald said it had long been his plan to “eventually own a proprietary bingo platform to provide [Intertain] with options and flexibility for our current and future business.” Fitzgerald said Intertain’s Vera&John online casino brand would ‘immediately” integrate the bingo platform and side games into its existing platform.
Intertain has been on a bingo buying binge, acquiring Mandalay Media’s UK-facing Costa Bingo operation last summer, followed by the addition of the Jackpotjoy and Botemania brands this February. Intertain appears determined to follow the ‘if it’s for sale, we want it’ course set by fellow Canucks Amaya Gaming, which owns a minority stake in Intertain and gave birth to Intertain via the late-2013 sale of its WagerLogic division.
Fitzgerald says the Bingo.ca domain acquisition will allow Intertain to launch a Canada-wide free-play bingo network “in order to showcase its products and bingo expertise to provincial lottery corporations.”
The mention of some kind of prospective partnership with Canada’s provincial gaming monopolies is another thing Intertain and Amaya share. Amaya has publicly mused about expanding its existing technology partnership with Loto-Quebec to become an “online solutions supplier,” although the specific parameters of this proposed relationship remain opaque.
