Gamevy and Glück merge

London-based games supplier Gamevy and its German counterpart Glück have merged to form Glück Group.

Gamevy founder Paul Dolman-Darrall has become CEO of the new 60-strong entity, while Glück Games managing director Robert Lenzhofer retains his title and will be focused on product and revenues.

The deal completed on Friday 19 October after several months of negotiations and a period of informal partnership.

Dolman-Darrall and Lenzhofer are joined on the senior management team by Gamevy co-founders Helen Walton and Dan Rough and Glück co-founders Arvind Upadhyay and Rafael Razim.

Walton will remain chief commercial officer in the combined entity focused on sales and Rough will be focused on product development and operators.

Together the two companies have a range of over 140 products including instant lotteries, scratch cards, bingo, keno, skill games and instant wins.

They already supply state lotteries such as Norsk Tipping, The Health Lottery and Lottmatica, and hope to announce more high-profile partnerships in the coming months. They report delivery of over €50m per year in GGR for their customers.

Both companies were founded in 2015 and have won ‘Game To Watch’ at ICE since then, with Gamevy picking up the title in 2016 and Glück doing so the following year.

Shortly after winning Game To Watch, Gamevy was reported as having received investment from a major lottery operator.

It is understood that Lottoland founder David von Rosen is an investor in both businesses but Glück Group remains under independent leadership.

Gamevy was founded with a focus on entertainment-led real-money games and creating a suite of products that appealed to a broader demographic of players.

Similarly, Glück is focused on scratch, single-player bingo and keno. Together the two companies will offer a range of casual real money games aimed at lottery, bingo and casual gaming customers.

The businesses originally partnered by combining their portfolios to target operators. Three months prior to Friday’s completion the businesses started discussing technology integration and have already merged a number of processes including sales.

The two companies currently run separate back-office systems, linked by APIs, but will seek to integrate fully going forward. They will trade as two separate brands in the short-term pending completion of regulatory work.

“The merger of the two entities has already been executed on many operational levels and it’s a great match – on a people-level, on a product-level, on an office-geography-level and even on a customer-level the two companies almost fully complement each other,” said Lenzhofer.

The companies will continue to run studios in London, Bilbao and Berlin with their existing 60 staff and are looking to grow aggressively over the next few years.

Commenting on the merger, Dolman-Darrall said: “We’ve been close colleagues and joint partners for what feels like a very long time. We know that we have a uniquely talented bunch of designers, developers and marketeers and we believe that good as the success we have seen separately has been, together we will achieve even more. It gives us the ability to innovate more in our product development, serve our existing customers better and reach a whole range of new customers as well.”