Skip to main content

Paddy Power buys Sportsbet Australia

This has been in the pipeline for a while but I was asked to keep quiet on it to protect my source.

Paddy Power take control of Sportsbet

Ireland's leading bookmaking firm Paddy Power, mooted to be a bidder for TAB licenses in Australia, has purchased a 51 per cent stake in Northern Territory-based Sportsbet.

Racing Post reported that Paddy Power had paid an initial €27.2 million for the majority stake in the company established by the Tripp family.


The tricky part here is that Sportsbet own nearly 20% of IAS, who are up for sale as well. It's all go in the Australian betting market at the moment.

Sportsbet, based in Darwin, was the original sports bookmaker in Australia. It was founded in the late 80s by Bryan Clark who sold the business a decade later. It has since changed hands a couple of times before the Tripp group purchased it and improved it significantly. And now they've been able to cash in on their hard work.

Paddy Power buys Sportsbet stake, shares rise

It sounds like a wise strategic move for them - the UK and Ireland is a very competitive market, tax in Ireland has just gone up and the Australian market has just been deregulated.

Here's the presentation that Paddy Power has passed onto shareholders. There's one serious flaw in it - the awareness of the name. Australia has TAB Sportsbet (the monopoly sports operator in most states) and there is Sportsbet (often listed as Sportsbet NT or Sportsbet Australia). Ask those same people who said the awareness was 78% to differentiate between the two and it would fall flat on its face!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

It's all gone Pete Tong at Betfair!

The Christmas Hurdle from Leopardstown, a good Grade 2 race during the holiday period. But now it will go into history as the race which brought Betfair down. Over £21m at odds of 29 available on Voler La Vedette in-running - that's a potential liability of over £500m. You might think that's a bit suspicious, something's fishy, especially with the horse starting at a Betfair SP of 2.96. Well, this wasn't a horse being stopped by a jockey either - the bloody horse won! Look at what was matched at 29. Split that in half and multiply by 28 for the actual liability for the layer(s). (Matched amounts always shown as double the backers' stake, never counts the layers' risk). There's no way a Betfair client would have £600m+ in their account. Maybe £20 or even £50m from the massive syndicates who regard(ed) Betfair as safer than any bank, but not £600m. So the error has to be something technical. However, rumour has it, a helpdesk reply (not gospel, natur

Spot-fixing - you will never, ever be able to stop it

According to this report , IPL tournaments so far have been rife with spot-fixing - that is fixing minor elements of the game - runs in a single over, number of wides bowled etc. The curious part of that article is that the Income Tax department are supposed to have found these crimes. What idiot would be stupid enough to put down 'big wad of cash handed to me by bookie' as a source of income? Backhanders for sportsmen, particularly in a celebrity- and cricket-obsessed culture like India are not rare. They could come from anything like turning up to open someone's new business (not a sponsor, but a 'friend of a friend' arrangement), to being a guest at some devoted fan's dinner party etc. The opportunities are always there, and there will always be people trying to become friends with players and their entourage - that is human nature. This form of match-fixing (and it's not really fixing a match, just a minor element of it) is very hard to prove, but also,

lay the field - my favourite racing strategy

Dabbling with laying the field in-running at various prices today, not just one price, but several in the same race. Got several matched in the previous race at Brighton, then this race came along at Nottingham. Such a long straight at Nottingham makes punters often over-react and think the finish line is closer than it actually is. As you can see by the number of bets matched, there was plenty of volatility in this in-play market. It's rare you'll get a complete wipe-out with one horse getting matched at all levels, but it can happen, so don't give yourself too much risk...