Gamesys casinos

Gamesys Operations Limited Information

Who Are Gamesys?

If you want to know who Gamesys are, all you need to do is ask them; the operator has its own public-facing website, which you’ll find here. It’s neatly divided into sections for careers, investors, and contacts and gives you a sense of how the company feels about itself. There’s a bold statement right in the middle of the Gamesys website; it tells readers that this is a “leading online gaming operator” and that the business is “well positioned strategically for growth.” That’s the kind of language that tells you two things; firstly, that the company has a high opinion of itself, and secondly, that its website is designed more for business customers than it is for the general public.

The most important piece of information that the Gamesys Operations homepage gives away isn’t anything to do with its status as a leading operator or how well positioned for growth it might be, though; it’s in the headline that comes before that, which reads “Gamesys, a Bally’s Corporation Company.” The first thing that Gamesys wants readers to know about it is that it belongs to somebody else. What is Bally’s Corporation, and why is it relevant? We’ll come to that in a moment or two. Before we do, let’s look at another vital source of information – Wikipedia.

Gamesys Operations Limited on Wikipedia

Just the fact that Gamesys Operations Limited has a Wikipedia page is a big deal; very few casino network companies are considered important enough to justify one. When you come across one that does, you know the operator is a big deal. The Wikipedia entry on Gamesys is more of a stub than a detailed overview of what the company is and what it does, but there are still some valuable pieces of information there that you won’t necessarily find on the Gamesys website. It tells us, for example, that Gamesys was founded by three software developers (Noel Hayden, Andrew Dixon and Robin Tombs) in 2001. It also tells us that Virgin Games is a rare example of an iGaming site that was bought into the company rather than developed in-house; Gamesys acquired the site in January 2013. More interesting than that, though, is what happened next.

Gamesys Operations and JackpotJoy

If you know a thing or two about Gamesys Operations Limited, you’ll know that it owns and operates the JackpotJoy iGaming brand. The story of Gamesys Operations and JackpotJoy is long and complicated, but we’ll try to condense it for you. In February 2015, Gamesys sold the JackpotJoy brand to a company called the Intertain Group for a reported £425.8m. The Intertain Group then rebranded itself as the JPJ group, naming itself after its high-profile acquisition.

Four years later, in September 2019, The JPJ Group came back for more, purchasing Gamesys Operations as a reverse takeover and then renaming itself as “The Gamesys Group.” To phrase all of this another way, Gamesys operations sold JackpotJoy, and then further down the line, JackpotJoy came back and bought Gamesys Operations before taking on the name. If that sounds confusing to you, imagine how the people working for the company must have felt at the time.

Gamesys Operations Limited and the UKGC

Very large casino network companies tend to have multiple licenses. Gamesys Operations Limited, which is based in Gibraltar, has several. Sister Site is an information resource for players in the UK, though, so we only concern ourselves with whether an operator has the right licence to operate domestically. We’re pleased to report that Gamesys Operations Limited does, and it’s held with the UK Gambling Commission under account no. 38905.

The current UKGC licence held by Gamesys Operations has been in force since November 2014, although the company itself has obviously been around for far longer than that. The licence currently covers fifteen active casinos, some of which are operated on a white-label basis rather than being operated by Gamesys acting alone. More importantly, there are no regulatory actions recorded against Gamesys. That means no fines, no suspensions, no warnings and no sanctions. We’ll update this page if that ever changes, but for now, Gamesys can be considered squeaky clean from a regulatory point of view.

Gamesys Operations and Bally’s Corporation

The company was flying high in early March 2021 when Bally’s Corporation made an offer of $2.7bn to purchase it. We’ve listed the price in dollars because that’s how it was paid; Bally’s Corporation is an American iGaming company. Given the value of the offer, a sale was always likely – and so it proved to be the case. The deal went through in October 2021, and Gamesys Operations Limited became a Bally’s property. That begs the same question we asked further up this page; who or what is Bally’s Corporation?

The first thing you should know about Bally’s Corporation, other than the fact that it’s an American business, is that it’s not as old as Gamesys. Bally’s was founded in 2004, three years after Gamesys was incorporated. The second thing you should know is that it’s absolutely enormous. An estimated 5500 people work for Bally’s Corporation, and the company is believed to have total assets of £1.93bn with revenue of £372m per annum. As enormous as the price tag attached to its assets is, the revenue figure of Gamesys is actually higher than that of Bally’s, with an estimated £727m coming in each year.

You’ll find the headquarters of Bally’s Corporation in Providence, Rhode Island, from which it supervises not only the entities it owns (like Gamesys) but also its fifteen brick-and-mortar casinos, its horse racing tracks, and its fantasy sports games. It used to own dog tracks, too, but they’ve been closed down as interest in the sport has declined in recent years. Of all the many things that Bally’s Corporation has ever bought, the strangest is the Association of Volleyball Professionals in the USA, which it purchased in July 2021.

That’s the story of Gamesys in a nutshell; it was formed, sold JackpotJoy, was in turn bought out by JackpotJoy, and is now owned by an enormous American iGaming giant. It also owns and operates some of the top iGaming sites on the UK scene – so let’s look at the best of them.