WILMINGTON, Del.-Mobile gaming and gambling company Zone4Play Inc. announced it has acquired a minority stake in MixTV, an Israeli outfit that integrates short message services with TV broadcasts.
MixTV plans to launch a fixed-odds gambling application with the U.K. Poker Channel in mid-April, and is negotiating to establish other agreements in the United Kingdom, where mobile gambling is quickly gaining steam. The acquisition was made in exchange for 625,000 common shares of Zone4Play stock, an over-the-counter stock trading at $1.50 Friday morning.
Zone4Play said it intends to bring SMS-TV to U.S. consumers in the near future, but it’s unlikely the application will include gambling features anytime soon. Mobile wagering is beginning to thrive in the United Kingdom, due largely to a lack of regulation, U.S. laws forbid interstate gambling on games of chance.
“The SMS-TV space is already lucrative in Europe and is about to expand into the U.S. market,” said Idan Miller, Zone4Play’s senior vice president of marketing and sales. “Zone4Play will soon introduce a number of groundbreaking TV formats based on the combined technologies of MixTV and Zone4Play.”
