Aristocrat Leisure bought Playtech to break into the online gambling sector, which is currently estimated at 60 billion euros and is predicted to grow in line with broader consumer and technology trends, accelerated through the pandemic. The breaking news was announced by Invest in Estonia. 

In fact, it is not exactly clear if the deal is already closed as in the title of the news it is written that “One of the first Estonian unicorns, Playtech, will be sold to Australian company Aristocrat for €3.2 billion”.

Aristocrat Leisure is among the leading global gaming content and technology companies and top-tier mobile games publishers.

Playtech was founded in Tartu, the second-largest city of Estonia, in 1999. The mastermind behind the start of Playtech was Cypriot-Israeli entrepreneur Teddy Sagi. His idea was to bring together the best minds from gaming, technology, and multimedia to create a company without a rival. He chose Estonia for the company’s location.

It only took two years for Sagi and his team to launch the company’s first casino – but this was just the beginning as several technologies and media usage trends were taken advantage of on the way, innovating the way online gaming software is run through and through.

Just over two decades later, Playtech is on the FTSE 250 Index and listed on the London Stock Exchange. Playtech now owns over 300 gaming brands, has more than 150 global licensees and runs its offices in 19 countries around the world.

One of the key success factors for Playtech in recent years has been its ability to hire and retain top-class talent.

Estonia is a world leader in unicorns per capita. Despite a population of 1.3 million people, the country has been the birthplace of seven unicorns so far: Skype in 2005, Playtech in 2007, Wise in 2015, Bolt in 2018, Pipedrive in 2020, Zego and ID.me in 2021. That’s 5.3 unicorns per capita. And the time lag between the creation of each following unicorn is constantly decreasing.