Downturn fails to dent online gambling

Published on Wednesday 15 October 2008 21:47

SPORTINGBET, the online gambling site, said it was seeing no signs of a slowdown yesterday, with more and more punters parting with their cash, despite financial turmoil and recession fears.

The website operator reported a 30 per cent increase in net gaming revenues during August and September and was "cautiously optimistic" for the current year.

Recent trading is even stronger than the 23 per cent growth in gaming revenues to 147 million that the group recorded in the year to 31 July, when gamblers wagered 1.36 billion.

Sportingbet said it had seen "no evidence" of any negative impact on the business from recent events in financial markets. Shares in the Aim-listed company rose 7.4 per cent to 29p.

Two years ago, Sportingbet faced near collapse following the loss of its US-facing business after legislation banned foreign companies operating there. But yesterday it said operating profits had more than trebled to 22.7m.

At pre-tax level, the group lost 800,000, a huge fall from the 32.6m loss in the previous year.

Sports betting accounts for more than 60 per cent of the group's revenues, and this year's European Football Championship providing a 1m boost, helped by unexpected results, such as Turkey's strong showing.

Sportingbet's European business recorded strong growth throughout the year, with customer numbers increasing 6 per cent to 464,523 and the number of bets up 14 per cent to 51.5 million. Average bet sizes also rose , to 14.98, compared with 13.26 the previous year.

Growth was helped by the development of its "in-play" betting system, which allows punters to make a variety of bets during live action, accounting for 45 per cent of its European sports turnover.

Sportingbet is working towards a round-the-clock in-play betting service covering events in various time zones.