An Elaborate History of Bwin.Party

Updated: 15.08.2025

Bwin Interactive Entertainment and PartyGaming were both extremely popular online gambling sites for most of the 2000s. But when they decided to join forces and merge in 2011, their popularity skyrocketed and their already robust fan base grew even more.

They are now known as Bwin.Party Digital Entertainment. Bwin and PartyGaming each still operate their own distinct and separate websites, as these two entities, though obviously joined at the hip, specialize in very different sectors of the gaming universe. But by joining forces and sharing resources, they will be able to significantly increase their player pool. They will also be able to greatly expand their networks, which is one of the keys to success in this business.

How Bwin Started

Bwin dates back to the late 1990s when the company was called BetandWin. Although twelve men were responsible for the creation of this company, one man is especially important to Bwin's early success: Manfred Bodner. After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Business and International Studies from Webster University, Bodner applied his business skills to making Bwin a reality. He focused on their marketing techniques and was responsible for making sure they met their revenue goals.

The group of twelve toiled, and within a year they were able to launch their first site, which focused on sports betting. This site took off, with the company's seemingly out-of-nowhere newness appealing to people everywhere. And it wasn't long before Bwin had built itself up enough to go public on the Vienna Stock Exchange.

Going even further, in little more than a year, they opened a gaming company called Simon Bold in Gibraltar. Tax advantages lured the entire company to Gibraltar, a move copied by the e-business gambling companies that followed a few years later.

The money Bwin set aside from the lower tax rate was used to expand the company. In 2002, Bwin launched the world's first online live sports betting platform, allowing customers to place bets on sporting events in real time. This platform was not only the first of its kind (most online bookmakers still do not offer such a service), but also marked a real turning point for online gambling in general.

Recognizing their players' enthusiasm for poker, Bwin focused their efforts on creating new and better programs to improve not only the actual poker games on the site, but also the experience of playing them. In 2005, they acquired Ongame, a leading poker site that was on the verge of folding. This acquisition not only saved Ongame, but also helped Bwin establish a respectable presence in the online poker space.

Changing Their Identity

In 2006, Bwin made it official and changed the name from BetandWin to the now familiar Bwin. Manfred Bodner, one of the company's co-founders, released this statement to the press after the event.

Over a period of two years, we created a fundamental communication structure with the Bwin brand, which emerged from the transformation of BetandWin and now covers a diverse product portfolio.

The United States government enforced the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act around the time Bwin was forming its new identity. This act made it impossible for Bwin to serve any of its US customers, and to serve any new customers attracted to the lure of Bwin's gaming products. The act hit Bwin where it really hurt - its bottom line. The company couldn't just sit back and watch its profits continue to slide. It had to find new customers in new places.

In 2009, Bwin discovered something rather serendipitous; they acquired what was better than they expected, Italy's leading online gambling site, Gioco Digitale. They bought it for about $56 million in cold cash and 2.3 million of their own shares. Bwin was no slouch as an acquirer, and they began seriously funding the study of compulsive gambling at Harvard Medical School. They became an active member of the European Gaming and Betting Association, took the lead in addiction prevention across Europe, and used Gioco Digitale to further penetrate the Italian online gambling market.

At this point, Bwin began sponsoring several teams, the most prominent of which were Real Madrid and AC Milan. They then set out to penetrate more and more foreign markets, and in 2010 they had the distinction of being the first site to be awarded a gaming license in France. All these developments had a very salutary effect on Bwin's player base, which by 2010 had surpassed the 20 million mark. With that kind of reach, they were obviously a company to be associated with.

The Founders of PartyGaming

PartyGaming has two main founders and these are key people to learn about if you want to know the real story behind the site. This is the company of Ruth Parasol and Anurag Dikshit. Since Parasol is the founder I know the least about, let's start with her. She received her bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of San Francisco in 1988 and her law degree from Western State University of Law in 1992.

Parasol had always dreamed of being an entrepreneur, and now she had the educational background to make it happen. Her first foray into business was in the online pornography industry, but she was forced to abandon that venture due to unfavorable publicity. With an uncanny knack for sniffing out emerging industries, she set her sights on online gambling. After researching online gambling and all the regulations involved, she set about developing her first site, Starluck Casino Online. Unfortunately, this site did not live up to her expectations and she teamed up with Anurag Dikshit to have a better chance at doing something really big in the online gaming industry.

The Expansion of PartyGaming

Parasol, Dikshit and their newly formed team spent months developing new games for the site that would become PartyPoker.com. They focused on poker as they saw the potential to make a significant amount of money in this particular form of online gambling.

Before launching their site, the games were put through their paces by Michael Shackleford, a renowned casino statistician. Unfortunately for the site's founders, Shackleford's findings were far from what they had hoped; he called their games unfair, with a decided bias in favor of the house.

In 2001, PartyPoker was launched with the necessary corrections to fix an initial problem. Its rapid rise in popularity took it to the top levels of online poker, where it was soon found in online casino form, using the same software used for the poker site to provide these services.

They became the site with the largest player base, which essentially drew more players to their site. Most attractive was the fact that players had to wait less for a game to start because there were enough players online even during the off-peak hours of the day.

In less than four years, PartyGaming PLC was making over $500 million in annual profits. By 2005, PartyGaming was listed on the London Stock Exchange and valued at over $8 billion. The company was growing at nearly 50% and seemed to have a very bright future. But this success story was almost over, as new laws were about to be passed in the United States that would have a lasting impact on the online gambling business.

How the UIGEA Affected PartyGaming

In October 2006, Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which made it illegal for gambling sites to process transactions from U.S. customers. The UIGEA was part of the Safe Port Act, which was a response to post-9/11 security concerns. The UIGEA was not directly about online poker; rather, it made it illegal for UIGEA was part of the Safe Port Act, which was a response to security concerns after 9/11. The UIGEA was not directly about online poker; rather, it made it illegal for companies to transfer money to and from players to poker sites if the companies selling poker were not licensed by the states where the players lived.

“This development is a significant setback for our company, our shareholders, our players, and our industry,”

said Mitch Garber, Chief Executive Officer of PartyGaming PLC. This law has obviously been a crippling blow to the company, and to make up for the really big financial losses, they felt they had no choice but to grow.

2009, What a Year!

For two and a half years after the merger, PartyGaming worked up a storm of ideas that it hoped would attract new players and boost its annual profits. Then, in April 2009, it turned to what may have been its last resort: agreeing to pay $105 million to the Department of Justice for crossing the line in its pre-UIGEA efforts to attract U.S. players.

In November 2009, Party Gaming purchased the rights to the World Poker Tour from the World Poker Tour Company for $12.3 million. The components of the World Poker Tour are a series of different types of poker format tournaments played in different parts of the world. Of course, it is not only known in the USA, but also in many other poker-playing countries. The tour and its television exposure help to make poker more popular in general, and enough players seem to be drawn to it that the segment has survived and continues to thrive.

In 2009, PartyPoker was named eGaming Review's Poker Operator of the Year at the Gaming Awards. According to EGR magazine, despite the massive setback that occurred in 2006, PartyPoker "managed to maintain its position as the largest non-US standalone poker site in online gaming.

In 2010, PartyGaming shifted its focus from poker to casino games. It developed an online casino called PartyCasino, which was designed to provide a virtual casino experience as close to the real thing as possible. PartyCasino was meant to be a psychedelic experience in a virtual online world.

The site has just about everything you can imagine, from slot games to cash games, and it even offers the option of watching a live video stream of a real dealer if that's what you prefer. From the start, PartyCasino was a huge success, but PartyGaming was still looking to expand, and that's when speculation about a merger began to grow.

The Bwin.party Merger

Up until the time that Bwin and PartyGaming began to consider a merger, they were both performing well and were satisfied with their separate businesses. However, they also recognized that they were not performing with the same vigor or speed as they had prior to the introduction of the UIGEA. They felt that a merger would help them perform with much greater vigor and speed. They mulled it over for about a year, it is said, and then in March 2011 they emerged as a combined force in the online gaming market.

The people who held the most important management positions in the two companies prior to the merger have largely retained their positions after the merger. As a result, the Bwin.Party company - which is far larger and broader in scope than either of its components - has a management team that is largely the same as it was before the merger. And with greater efficiency and cooperation within the one, somewhat more seamless company it has become, both management and shareholders should see greater gains and margins in the still nascent but burgeoning global economy of the 21st century.

A Short Partnership with Zynga

In the fall of 2012, Bwin.Party announced that it had entered into a partnership with Zynga Inc. This company was (and still is) a major provider of internet gaming services that was ready to enter the real-money gaming market. Under the terms of the partnership, Bwin.Party would be responsible for providing the platform and software needed to launch and maintain Zynga's poker and casino games. In return, Bwin.Party would receive a small percentage of Zynga's profits from these new games.

In February 2015, disagreements between the CEOs of Zynga and Bwin.Party led both companies to send letters to their shareholders announcing the end of their partnership. The online gaming sites that Bwin.Party had helped create - ZyngaPlusCasino and ZyngaPlusPoker - were shut down shortly thereafter.

According to Casino News Daily, before the partnership was officially terminated,

“In November 2014 Bwin.Party said it was considering a number of business propositions by interested parties.”

We are intrigued to find out what partnerships may be in store for Bwin.Party in the near future.

Bwin.Party Reaches Out to Nearby Communities

When Bwin.Party was founded, they found that giving back to those less fortunate was a passion of theirs. The company now allows its employees to donate four to eight hours a year on company time to various charitable or environmental projects.

Bwin.Party works with various charities and has done some impressive things to help those in need. In particular, the Bwin.Party team has - Raised money for cancer research. - Worked with the World Wildlife Fund to plant trees in disaster areas. - Built several schools in India. In addition to these pretty substantial contributions, they've also made numerous donations to a variety of different organizations and causes, including the British Heart Foundation, Children's Cancer Research and the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.

Since the merger, Bwin.Party has systematically pursued new opportunities to help those in need, and to date has donated billions of dollars in cash to the charities listed above, as well as several other worthy causes.