Ever since Bwin.party edged out 888’s offer for bwin.party in early September, the value of 888’s old offer and GVC’s winning offer have almost converged in terms of total value. GVC’s offer was 25 pence and .231 GVC shares for each BPTY share. At today’s prices, that puts the total at £768.23M in equity and £207M in cash, for a grand total of $975M in cash and equity. 888’s original offer is now worth £540M in equity and £326.5M in cash, for a total of £866.5M, for a difference of only £108M. But since 888’s more recent offer was even higher, the total value of both final offers are almost equal.

While the GVC offer is still a bit higher, its value has been diminishing since the bwin.party board agreed on the deal. 888’s offer is still around the same as it was back on September 4th since 888 stock hasn’t moved much since. It’s quite a long shot to say the least, but bwin.party shareholders have yet to approve the GVC deal. If GVC shares keep migrating down and 888 jumps higher before that meeting, 888’s last offer may end up actually being more valuable and with more cash to boot. What will bwin.party shareholders do then? Will they stop the deal? Probably not, but it will be quite interesting to see.

There’s more to say on bwin.party’s mistake besides GVC’s unregulated business model and the risks it presents for bwin.party. The logistics of the move have GVC moving its sportsbook into the bwin.party platform, but that platform is old and judging by the numbers, not very efficient. Sports is bwin.party’s strongest segment and it barely grew by 1% last year. 888’s sportsbook revenue grew by 81% last quarter. Its platform just works better.

The evidence of a well-functioning back office is organic growth. It means that the software driving life time value for each customer is actually working. This, bwin.party has obviously not had for a while, which is why it was seeking to be bought out so someone else could tackle the problem. While GVC does have some organic growth, much of it is in markets with little competition, and a lot of GVC’s growth has been by acquisition. This says nothing of the platform that will be driving GVC/bwin.party’s players. Is it equipped to fully optimize the combined customer base? The case isn’t too compelling. Why would you want to migrate sportsbook into a platform that doesn’t seem to be working very well?