Unibet Sportingbet merger…rumour is

The big rumour doing the rounds at the moment is a possible merger between Unibet and Sportingbet.

A couple of UK papers have reported that the two net gambling giants have been involved in discussions about a possible tie-up.  Both camps are pretty tight lipped about the affair…Sportingbet’s CEO has said that they are ‘not for sale’ while Unibet chief Henrik Tjarnstrom will only go as far as to say, “Unibet has been in talks with many companies and is looking to acquire a business to expand its geographic reach“.

I’d bet they’ll announce merger plans before the end of year, too scared to get left in the wake of the merged Bwin / Party Gaming entity.

But whatever happens I guarantee you one thing.  The word SYNERGY is going to be used a whole lot in meeting rooms at Unibet, Sportingbet and their respective corporate advisers.  The suits really do love that word.

I’m sure there are plenty of synergies between Unibet and Sportingbet.  Lets face it they do they same thing, in pretty much the same places, with the same kind of customers.  If that doesn’t give scope for cutting duplicate function and improving economies of scale then I don’t know what will.

Here’s another one.  They may be able to forgo any costly re-branding exercise.  Yep. Thanks to their conveniently fitting names they can do a little bit of chop-chop photo shopping and hey presto!… they’ve got a new name (or same name as the case may be) and new corporate brand.

option 1…

option 2…

or if they want to get really adventurous, option 3…

There’s a design agency saving of €1 million right there!  Roll that into a live casino tournament to celebrate the merger I say (less a small commission for the brilliant person who came up with the idea).

LD