Euro 2008 to Blame for Drop in Profits

The shareholders of PartyGaming thought they were on course to richness, as the future looked bright and shares soared high. That is why they must be wondering what went wrong, as their assets took a massive blow of more than 10% due to a drop of revenues since April 28 this year.

The PartyGaming brand
PartyGaming is the company which operates Party Poker and Party Casino websites and has recently created Party Bingo as well, in another step to boost up the number of active players using its services. They must be doing something right, as they are way past the one million active users mark.

Still, something went wrong. Although this setback was described as "minor" and was "expected," this situation is still considered as disappointing for the firm.

Looking into the matter has revealed that this was caused by a weaker-than-expected performance in PartyGaming's poker business and sports betting. And if that's not enough, due to the strong competition in poker, PartyGaming had no other choice than increasing bonuses and costs associated with some tournaments during this period of time.

Euro 2008 vs. PartyGaming
So, all the wise men sat and tried to understand what has caused this, and to their joy - they managed to complete the puzzle, by claiming that the responsibility for this setback lies on the Euro 2008 tournament, which ended some two weeks ago.

According to PartyGaming, the Euro football championship competed with them for their members' leisure time and despite their great efforts - they couldn't help but come up short. This explanation is to be considered as a surprising one, as most of the sport betting sites enjoyed a nice boost in business during the Euro, as it was considered by many as much easier to predict than the regular league matches of the English Premiership, for instance.

Drawing conclusions
Luckily for the investors, this strange explanation did not prevent PartyGaming from understanding that changes had to be done. Therefore, in a way to increase profit margins, the firm will go through operational efficiencies and will try to reduce marketing costs.