Aristocrat finalises acquisition of Big Fish Games

Aristocrat Leisure has today (Wednesday) completed its previously announced acquisition of Big Fish Games from Churchill Downs Incorporated.

In November, Aristocrat revealed that it had agreed a deal to purchase the social gaming company for approximately $900m (€754.2m).

Aristocrat said that Big Fish would operate as a standalone business alongside Aristocrat’s Product Madness and Plarium, the latter of which it acquired in a deal worth $500m in October 2017.

Big Fish is a global publisher of free-to-play games that operates across the social casino, social gaming and premium paid games markets.

Trevor Croker, managing director of Aristocrat, said: “The strategic and financial benefits of this acquisition are highly compelling.

“Big Fish will immediately provide scale across our entire digital platform, and our social casino business will become the second largest social casino publisher globally.

“Big Fish’s digital-first social casino content and industry leading meta-game capability and applications are highly complementary to Aristocrat’s existing and industry-leading land based digital content business.”

Croker added: “We are excited to work with the Big Fish team to take advantage of the opportunities this combination will create for shareholders and all stakeholders.”

Last month, Aristocrat also brokered a deal to acquire the complete source code and hardware design for a promotional kiosk solution developed by Phi Gaming.

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