Dermot Smurfit Jr wants even more deals with Las Vegas-style casinos for GameAccount Network (GAN), the online gaming technology company whose backers include members of the famous business family.
So he has moved with his wife and children over to the US to live on the outskirts of the desert city. His family arrived on Thursday.
“Jesus did 40 days and nights in the desert. Let’s see how long we can do it for,” he joked during the week.
London-listed GAN, which is trading at less than half the 135p it floated at in 2013, announced on Wednesday it had struck a deal with the digital arm of a casino owned by the California-based San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.
GAN will supply the casino with a suite of online “simulated gaming” products for use online, which the San Manuel tribe hopes will drive traffic to its land casino. Online gambling for real money is still illegal across most of the US.
It is the seventh such US deal negotiated by Smurfit, a nephew of Michael Smurfit and the eponymous son of Michael's brother, who is the chairman of Powerflute. Cousin Tony Smurfit, the new chief executive of Smurfit Kappa, is also a GAN investor.
The company lost £2.6 million last year and Smurfit Jr may feel under a little bit of pressure to strike more deals with its simulated gaming product while it waits for the wheels of regulation to turn more quickly. If and when online gambling is legalised across the US, however, GAN is in the perfect position to capitalise.
So why is the share trading so modest?
“We think it is because we are an Irish company, London-listed but US-facing. I don’t think anyone in the UK or Ireland pays much attention to what we are doing in the US. Perhaps it doesn’t register with them that we have done a deal with a huge casino business on the edge of Los Angeles.”
It sounds like Smurfit hankers after a US listing for GAN. Does he?
“We have always said if we are successful selling our products in the US, we would seek a US listing.”
Smurfit says GAN has already considered listing in the US with ADR (American depositary receipt) derivatives, but it was too difficult to make it work for the company. It might make a US listing within two years, he says, if it can get a market capitalisation of between $200 million and $300 million.
Its market value in London is currently about £32 million, or $50 million. Sounds like Smurfit might need to draw upon some of those legendary reserves of family charm to do enough deals to get GAN where he wants it.
What would Jesus do?
