RECORD REVENUES FOR EVEREST POKER PARENT

RECORD REVENUES FOR EVEREST POKER PARENT Taiwan's Gigamedia turns in a solid first quarter With more real money players and soaring revenues, the Taiwan firm Gigamedia, which owns the Everest online poker company, delivered good news to investors this week in releasing its Q1 2008 results. Gigamedia’s chief executive Arthur Wang re-emphasised the importance of the company's deal with Harrah's for high profile World Series of Poker sponsorship by the Everest brand, pointing out that the poker spectacular is beamed into 350 million homes through television coverage. Wang also revealed that his company is looking to get involved in sportsbetting soon, saying: “Sportsbetting will allow us to address the seasonality of our poker and casino products…We can use the summer for marketing activities around sporting events.” The integration of Everest poker and casino interests, and the value of cross-marketing in these fields was underlined in Wang's statement, which reported that the company’s gaming software had generated a 46 percent rise in revenues to $38.3 million in this year's first quarter.  The group's online poker activities produced an increase in revenues of 11 percent to reach $29.7 million, and saw growth of 14 percent in new Everest Poker real money players.