Playtika the casino games developer launches investment fund

Playtika, which makes online casino-style games owned by a group involving Alibaba tycoon Jack Ma, has launched a new investment arm that targets to provide up to $400m towards digital entertainment and consumer internet businesses.

Titled as Playtika Growth Investments, the division will pursue companies established and profitable or near break-even with proven business models and products.

Based in the nation of Israel Playtika, the firm behind Poker Heat and main shirt sponsor of Spanish football team Sevilla invested an amount of $300m in over 10 acquisitions since its inception in 2010.

Firms in which it invests will be enabled to acquire access to Playtika’s marketing, monetisation, technology, and product teams.

Playtika Growth MD Eric Rapps said: “Playtika’s operational teams oversee hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing budgets, the processing and analysis of more than 6 terabytes of data daily, and more than a billion dollars of revenue. They have been instrumental in Playtika’s success from a 10-person startup to a global market leader with 1700 employees across 14 offices in 10 countries. For the first time, their expertise will be made available to other companies and will help drive exceptional company performance and investment returns.”

Playtika was bought by a Chinese private equity consortium led by Giant Network Group in 2016 for $4.4bn.