Won.net Merger

Havas Interactive is looking to secure and expand its place in online gaming by merging newly purchased Prizecentral.com with its own Won.net. The merged site will be called Flipside.com and will combine Won.net's action, stratergy, and simulation game library with Prizecentral's casual games and prize allocation system to offer over 50 multiplayer game which can be played for prizes. The combined site will have approximately four million registered users from over 80 countries, making it the second largest gaming site on the Internet. "There are 12 million online gamers world-wide currently, and we expect that to grow to 28 million by 2004. We anticipate that this will create an online market worth $5 billion dollars in 2004," said Havas CEO Hubert Joly, "Havas Interactive will have, on a pro-forma basis in the online gaming space, a reach of 4.6% on the Internet vs. 2.8% for Microsoft's Zone and 1.1% for ea.com" The deal is expected to close in mid April.