Virgin Games seeks investors for marketing and international development, by Greg Tingle - 6th March 2010

It's been a huge news week for Richard Branson's Virgin Games.

Reports from various media outlets including eGaming Review, Gambling911, Casino News Media and various wires reveal that Virgin Games are on the lookout for external investors to help facilitate entering new markets and increase marketing spend.

The Virgin powerhouse is seriously considering entering markets such as France, Spain and South Africa where online gambling is regulated. In addition Virgin Games are eyeing off California and Florida where the legalization of intrastate online gambling has been proposed and is a hot subject in political and media rounds.

The online gaming brand is part of the AWOMO (A World Of My Own) push and is also seeking investors to increase marketing in established markets after the completion of its platform build which has been ramping up since 2007. The company is seeing increased player sign ups to both AWOMO and other Virgin Games brands such as VirginCasino.com and with dozens of new games being added its massive growth comes as no surprise.

Virgin boss Simon Burridge explains, "We do a lot of successful marketing and want to do more of it, but we can’t always throw appropriate sums behind it. We are limited in the profile that we can generate on our own behalf and with so many operators and markets opening up at the same time, we are going to need some cash."

Virgin Games is also expanding beyond online gambling to become a "total gaming destination" via its business arrangement with GDI (Game Domain International) offering 200 plus titles to download. This strategy could likely see Virgin Games move its non-gambling products in geo markets ahead of future legalisation of online gambling.

"Going into new markets is going to require a new advertising budget, and the amounts of money that Bwin and others have been spending would be impossible for us to match," Mr Burridge said. Every new market will require £5-10m of investment he forecasts. PartyGaming currently looks to have the lead on Virgin Games developing igaming business in Australia and the United States, however situations can change very quickly in the gaming sector, evidenced by Virgin releasing almost two dozen new casino games in the past few months.

VirginCasino.com has just released Amazon Wild and at AWOMO be on the lookout for Total War, Tomb Raider: Legend, Fifa Football Manager and Warhammer: Mark of Chaos.

Virgin Games strongest market is in the UK including much of Europe.

Americans and Australians seeking to participate in online gambling are advised to see the Media Man International World Casino Directory and Global Gaming Directory.

Media Man's Virgin Worlds Media will be providing more updates on the exciting developments at Virgin and GDI as more details come to light.

*The writer has a b2b agreement with a number of brands in the Virgin Enterprises Limited group, as they do with dozens of companies in the gaming, igaming, media and entertainment sector.

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