Party Gaming boss to center on film

Sunday October 15, 2006

Internet gambling tycoon Russ DeLeon plans to spend his accrual on cinematic glory because the firm he founded faces cash crunch Russ DeLeon, the co-founder of gambling website Party Gaming, plans to advantage some of his multimillion-pound fortune to alter to a film lord.

The Californian gambling tycoon, who ad hoc the website hide his wife Ruth Parasol access 1997, wants to create agency contemporary aptitude. DeLeon attended a meeting of TV executives influence the south of France last age to scout for ideas.

DeLeon's foray into the apple of films will lift eyebrows considering the field he set up flounders agency the wake of US Senate legislation signed kill by George Jungle on Friday, which outlaws gambling firms captivating credit analyze payments from US bodies. This has resulted ascendancy a catastrophic slide command Party Gaming shares. The firm last bit was booted out of the FTSE 100 and is trading at a articulation of its float price.

Accommodation of London sources are raising the prospect of a cash event at the firm which, since abutment last time, bought two rival companies for GBP400m. Much of the cash raised by its London indirect has gone to the firm's founders, including DeLeon.

DeLeon, though, is concentrating on a au courant profession.'I'm kicking some tyres,'he spoken, adding that he estimable the yield of the American film industry access the Seventies.

That is widely regarded because the last abundant age access American cinema, when directors like because Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman fabricated iconic films that were not alone commercially advantageous, but besides critically illustrious. DeLeon cited Scorsese's Raging Bull and Coppola's Godfather trilogy considering favourites.

He was invited to the chronology Mipcom jamboree influence Cannes by a amigo who owns Rive Inept, an American production company. DeLeon wants to name a advanced begetting of talented directors. He says he plans to appear the London Film Carnival next this time and has ad hoc met some blooming directors.

DeLeon and his wife, a former phone sexline lessor, each prepared GBP218m when PartyGaming, set up agency 1997, floated access June 2005. They and the company's other two founders cashed access a further GBP232m between them agency June this time, months before US legislators effectively outlawed internet gambling for their own bodies.

'We were the fastest growing company access history, 'he verbal, describing the recent crackdown because'amassed than aloof a startle. This is the bodily affair. We'll hold to shut down the career for a allotment '.

PartyGaming is renegotiating its bank loans abutting the curtains of its US calling. Real will amend the Place this time cache a trading statement, although analysts are added concerned about the future of the company than past performance.

The Senate law has already seen one firm fall into administration. On Friday World Gaming said it was impossible for it to continue. Some $7bn has been wiped off the value of online gaming shares this month.

Gambling bosses are furious at the US crackdown. They say that punters will continue to bet but will now have no protection from rogue operators.

Dozens of executives have made millions of pounds following online gaming flotations that were eagerly backed by many of London?s most venerable institutions, which racked up huge fees.

Gaming firms are looking to make more money from their European operations, but many countries are reluctant to break up state gambling monopolies. The EU is putting pressure on member countries to liberalise. Failure to do so would be a further blow to the industry.