PartyGaming, a major listed online gaming company, has announced that it has signed a multi-year, exclusive deal to provide an online poker service for the French market to Pari Mutuel Urbaine.
Founded in 1891, PMU is France’s pari-mutual horse racing company and is the largest horse race betting organisation in Europe. PMU recently posted its twelfth year of consecutive growth, with turnover of Euro 9.3 billion, of which Euro 660 million was generated from the PMU.fr betting website. PMU has more than 6.5 million customers in France using 10 000 retail outlets.
The two companies will co-operate to create a PMU-branded online poker service based upon PartyGaming’s poker software that will be integrated into PMU’s own player account systems.
This service will only be available when both PartyGaming and PMU have obtained the required French licences. The PMU poker service will also provide access for players to the shared player liquidity on PartyGaming’s French poker network that will include Party Poker.fr.
Commenting on today’s announcement, Jim Ryan, Chief Executive Officer of PartyGaming, said: “Today’s agreement with PMU is consistent with our stated strategy of securing a small number of high value partners in regulated markets. PMU is widely recognised as one of Europe’s leading betting businesses and we look forward to providing them with a world class poker service.”