Opinion: The questions raised by Zynga-bwin.party deal

I am surprised that it is bwin.party. It is one of the biggest players but in jy view it is also one of Zynga’s biggest competitors.

The way the deal stacks up is that bwin.party will re-skin its tech under Zynga’s name. The concern if I was an investor in Zynga, however is that bwin.party will soon have access to all of Zynga players that stick with the various games on offer. I’m sure there are some safeguards, but having access and moving them to your own platform can be done.

As far as the release is concerned, it just seemed hurried. There was very little to get investors excited. There was no information about how many players on Facebook will gamble around social games or poker. If you’re going to make an announcement like this with a partner like bwin.party you want to fence that x per cent of our poker players play poker for real-money and our partnership with bwin.party will give us the best product for our customers. As far as the other social games, same thing. How many gamble on slot games? I have that detail on other products out there but not this one so why get excited?

The other issue is the games themselves. From what I have heard and understood, the current Zynga Poker game allegedly does not play by standard random card odds. The games have a level of manipulation so that it creates more action. This is one of the examples why there are so many regulation panels around social games. The real challenge is that Facebook poker players have been playing a game that encourages more betting but does not penalise the player as much. So, when they play the real-money game, are they going to be turned off and go back to the social game?

From what I understand when the game is ready, Zynga will do an amazing job acquiring traffic to the real-money game. They will use freeplay offers to get more people from their current poker game to their real-money game. They will also announce record-breaking numbers and they will be the darling of the industry.

I’m interested, however in looking at the 30 days following the launch. Have those freeplay dollars been used and how fast? Does a social poker player really want to gamble with real-money in a game that does not play at all like their social game? This is the big unknown that I as an investor would need to understand.

I really thought that Zynga would do something to be their own operator or buy someone that they could run as their own operation. I would be concerned what bwin.party is doing and how vulnerable theZynga’s social players are from being moved to bwin.party poker platform. I would be equally concerned about the change in gameplay in keeping the numbers of players on the gambling site and keeping them from going back to social.

Overall, there is nothing in the announcement to suggest that Zynga is making a big play in gambling. It looks like a reciprocal licensing deal that seemed hurried to announce something good after weeks of bad news. But, saying that, it is a step in the right direction.

It will be interesting to see how they follow this up and what happens when the real-money operation launches next year.