On 31 August 2009 the The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) announced its intention of acquire Marvel Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:MVL) in a stock and cash transaction. The proposed acquisition has already been approved by the Boards of Directors at both Disney and Marvel, but there still needs to be approval of the transaction by shareholders in Marvel Entertainment, Inc., according to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act.
Disney have issued a press release on the acquisition and you can read the full thing by clicking here. Marvel (the celebrated producers of such comic heros as The Fantastic Four, X-Men, Spiderman, Thor, Captain America and hundreds more world-famous characters) have posted a very similar press release on their website, which you can read here.
Back on 24 June of this year, Online Pokies Club posted a news article on their site about the extension of the exclusive licencing deal between CryptoLogic Ltd. and Marvel Entertainment Inc., whereby CryptoLogic extended the contract yet again, this time until 2013. This deal allowed CryptoLogic to turn Marvel’s comic book heros into online pokie games, available at online gaming sites all over the world.
This was CryptoLogic’s response to enquiries made by onlinepokiesclub as to whether this exclusive licencing deal would be honoured should the acquisition go ahead;
“We recently renewed our agreement with Marvel to continue to offer the games through 2013. We do not anticipate the potential purchase of Marvel by Disney to impact our ability to continue to offer these games as per our current contract”.
- This seems to us to imply that the contract between Marvel and CryptoLogic is a steadfast deal which is contractually binding. So even if Disney didn’t want to promote or be associated with online pokies or online gambling subsequent to the acquisition of Marvel, the CryptoLogic contract would lock them into the process, at least until 2013.
Tags: crytologic, disney, marvel
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 5:48 am and is filed under News.
