NEWS
SOURCE: business.timesonline.co.uk
Sportingbet, the online gaming operator, has said that it will experiment with new markets, in a bid to offset the forced sale for a single dollar of its U.S. business.
The gaming group, which owns Paradise Poker and Sportingodds.com, said it would consider "embryonic business development" in new geographies but gave warning that the success of these ventures could not be guaranteed. "Some will work and some will fail," the group said in its statement of full-year results.
Sportingbet intends to invest in countries where it is currently underrepresented and has recently acquired a Turkish marketing partner and invested further in Italy, to fulfill this strategy.
It also said that it would consider targeted acquisitions where these were "commercially logical and value enhancing".
The Unlawful Gambling Enforcement Act caused the group to sell its U.S.-facing sports betting and casino business in October.
Sportingbet revealed a two-thirds increase in gross European profits in the year to July, but the one-off impact caused by the sale of the U.S. business resulted in pre-tax losses of £311.6 million for the year to July 31 from a profit of £71.2 million a year earlier, as turnover dived 35 percent to £1.32 billion.
The gaming group said that its share of the gross win, the amount the company takes from the punter, rose by 48 percent in Europe. Customers betting on the region's sports betting websites also rose by 14.3 percent to 436,779.
Andrew McIver, former group finance director who succeeds Nigel Payne as group chief executive on Friday, said: "To lose 75 percent of our business following the U.S. legislation but still record an operating profit for the year is, in my opinion, a highly creditable achievement."
Mr. McIver added that trading across the group was significantly ahead of the previous year and was in line with management expectations.
The company has also transferred its customer operations personnel to Dublin and licensed its operations in the Channel Islands, because of uncertainty over the impact of the 2005 Gambling Act in the UK.
Sportingbet is hopeful that the trend across Europe is to liberalise gambling and encourage more suppliers, rather than to clamp down on it. The European Commission has been applying pressure to EU member states that do not comply with free market requirements in gambling.
Shares in Sportingbet were unchanged at 48.5p.
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