NetPlay TV signs with UK's Five for daily TV casino 07/09/2009
NETPLAY TV has signed a five year deal Channel Five Broadcasting to broadcast a daily live casino show on UK TV channel Five.
The SuperCasino.com live interactive TV show will initially air from 12 midnight until 4am on Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings, starting on 17 September 2009, and will be extended to six nights a week by next month, and to seven nights from January next year.
The deal makes Five, which is owned by media giant RTL Group, the first UK national terrestrial broadcaster to take advantage of new rules by UK communications watchdog Ofcom, which recently reclassified gambling programming as teleshopping, allowing public service broadcast channels such as Five to air up to six hours of teleshopping in a 24-hour period.
The tie up with Five was predicted by EGRmagazine.com in June, when NetPlay TV first revealed it was to take advantage of the new rules. NetPlay TV already has an existing distribution relationship with Five to provide its Eurotelemillions Daily SuperDraw service.
Five sales director Kelly Williams said: "The recent changes to the rules on teleshopping open up new opportunities for additional revenue streams for terrestrial broadcasters through advertising. Uppermost in our minds, however, was the need to secure a regulated product that we could offer with confidence to our viewers. During a trial period, we were satisfied by the robust nature of NetPlay TV's market-leading interactive TV casino product."
The deal was made possible by a five year deal with software giant Playtech signed in July, which will enable NetPlayTV’s backend software to cope with the additional traffic.
Five has been granted an option of a 5% stake in the NetPlay TV, comprised of 9,754,822 shares. The strike price for the options is 28.5p per ordinary share.
The deal with Five follows Netplay TV launch of STVcasino.com on the STV channel last week.
As reported on EGRmagazine.com, PartyGaming signed a deal with Channel 5 to create a 'Five' branded bingo and casino egaming service targeting the UK market in June. The premium online service will launch later this year and will be operated by PartyGaming and promoted by Five.
For more on TV gaming, see our August TV gaming feature.
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Posted: 07/09/2009
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A. Shame
Yet another example of the UK's pathetically subservient 'watchdogs' changing the rules in favour of business at the expense of the public. People staying up from midnight to four in the morning to gamble can only be bad for them, for their families and for society. Even worse if it's every night, which obviously caters for gambling addicts. Which person could use this service and keep a nine to five job?
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