Are You Entertained Yet? 52 Entertainment

Bridge is reaching new heights as a widely recognized e-sport on the international circuit, and it’s partially thanks to a company known as 52 Entertainment. The acquisition of Bridge Baron and Great Game Products is their latest move – we find out exactly what’s laid out on the table so far.

The Start

Are you experienced? One of the first questions about 52 Entertainment has been this. When bridge players gravitate to a certain platform or brand, they want to make sure the platform (and people behind it) know about bridge and how to play it.

First, we caught up with Olivier Comte from Goto Games about the beginnings of the company.

“52 Entertainment was founded by a merger of Funbridge and Bridge Base (in 2018) by the current shareholders, the current management and myself.”

Olivier explains the objective was to create a champion of the bridge world. “And a more global, bigger company, which gives us access to more resources to develop products which fit with the expectations of bridge players.”

In short, yes, they’re pretty experienced.

Who is 52 Entertainment?

The 52 Entertainment brand links together several bridge platforms, including:

These platform remain stand-alone places to play bridge, but with a distinct development advantage that could mean we see great leaps in how the world experiences online bridge play.

Adding Bridge Baron

Great Game Products and Bridge Baron are a platform and software familiar to many seasoned online bridge players. The company merged with the larger 52 Entertainment brand in September, 2020 – and the big news was announced via press release. Will Bridge Baron continue to be developed as stand-alone software and compete in the Robot Bridge Championships? Time will tell. It might be of interest to note that 2019 was the first year Bridge Baron did not enter the event (2020 was cancelled due to the C19 Pandemic). Bridge Baron was a Bronze medalist in 2010.

From Thomas Throop – President of Great Game Products (via Press Release)

I am delighted that my father’s creation and legacy will continue and grow stronger with 52 Entertainment. Burak and I look forward to joining our many new colleagues to continue our passion and devotion to the game of Bridge. A great big thank you to all of our dedicated and loyal customers who have supported us through the years, I firmly believe that exciting times are ahead of us.

According to the press release, the larger company means an average of more than 2 million daily bridge players across the various platforms.