Leo Vegas to acquire Royal Panda

The Lion is joining forces with the Panda.

Leo Vegas have announced that they reached agreement to purchase Royal Panda with the deal scheduled to be completed December 1 this year.

Under the terms of the deal LeoVegas International Ltd will wholly acquire Royal Panda parent company Web Investments Ltd for €60 million up front, and a further €60 million earn out payment should Royal Panda hit the following targets post acquisition:

• € 50 million+ in Net gaming Revenue (NGR);
• € 34 million+ in NGR derived from the UK;
• € 15 million+ EBITDA; and
• € 5 million+ EBITDA derived from the UK

The clear UK market focus in the earn out targets is consistent with Leo’s rationale for the purchase…to strengthen their expansion in regulated gaming markets, especially in the UK.

Royal Panda would seem the ideal vehicle to achieve this, with over 50% of their revenues for Q3 2017 coming from UK players. They’re also growing fast (Q3 revenue of €9.8 million up 61% on Q3 2016), and mobile focused (65% of revenue) so fit well with Leo’s aim of being King of Mobile.

They also both share a strong commitment to live games.

LeoVegas Group CEO Gustaf Hagman had this to say of the purchase:

“Royal Panda has in a short time built up an efficient business with an exciting and strong brand. This is a major acquisition that we are carrying out following a carefully executed process. With the help of the strong symbolic value in the panda, the company has built a premium brand among gamers, and we will complement LeoVegas with Royal Panda. This gives us two great brands with global appeal, which makes the scalability in the continued growth strong while strengthening our position in the UK,”

So it seems both the Leo Vegas and Royal Panda brands will remain in tact, with separate websites and for the time being separate branded private live tables.

They do become another obvious candidate to offer ‘shared private tables’ in the future, ala Betsson Group, Paddy Power Betfair, and GVC Group’s Clubhouse.