The UK division of the Austrian gaming technologies operator NOVOMATIC Group – NOVOMATIC UK Ltd – which acquired Talarius Ltd on June 24th could face an in-depth investigation. Last week, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the country issued a decision that the merger may result in hurting the competition on the territory of the UK.
This is exactly why the CMA officially announced that the merger between NOVOMATIC UK and Talarius is to be referred for a second phase of the investigation, unless the two parties present sufficient and acceptable proofs in order to face the organisation’s competition concerns.
According to the Competition and Markets Authority, the importance of the merger between the two companies was a matter of national level. The Authority’s concerns regarded the gaming machine products supply in five areas in the country – Clapham, Chesterfield, Darlington, Dartford and Grimsby. The organisation explained that before their merger, the two companies were close rivals in each of the above-mentioned areas, so after the deal is finalised it is very unlikely for NOVOMATIC UK to face a worthy competitor from other adult gaming centres operator.
As already mentioned above, the two companies joined forces a few months ago, and NOVOMATIC UK acquired a total of 169 centres from Talarius. Currently, the Austrian company operates the so-called adult gaming centres (AGCs) under a number of brands, some of which are Noble and Admiral. UK-based Talarius, on the other hand, operates under the Quiksilver brand. After the completion of the merger, the joint entity is to own a total of 264 adult gaming centres on the territory of the country.
Up to date, the Austrian company has been primarily focused on consolidating its positions on the global regulated markets. In October 2016, the company joined forces in a partnership agreement with Kambi Group. Earlier in October, the company took part at this year’s edition of the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) through its subsidiary NOVOMATIC Americas.
The Director of Mergers at the Competition and Markets Authority Sheldon Mills commented on the matter, saying there were other competing gaming centres, as well as various betting shops and bingo halls offering gaming machines, but the organisation had not found their forces combined would be enough to compete with the ones of the merged entity.
For a long time now, the company has been operating on a number of international markets through its subsidiaries. At the end of April 2016, the company published its annual results for the fiscal 2015 and it turned out that the year has been good for NOVOMATIC. At the time of the annual financial report, the Chief Executive Officer of the operator Harald Neumann shared that the annual results proved how successful the implementation of the company’s strategy had been. Mr. Neumann revealed that NOVOMATIC had been focused on covering all the segments of the global gaming industry and eyed further expansion in some of the major European gaming markets, including the UK, Italy and Spain.
According to the company’s boss, the company had managed to build a strong presence on the territory of Spain. On the other hand, the company had been working to boost its reach among the UK customers, especially after it had acquired Playnation and got about 20,000 amusement machines in more than 1,700 locations.
- Author
Olivia Cole
