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industry update

Ok, plenty been happening lately, here's some of the news in brief.


Betfair - have announced the new CEO, Breon Corcoran from Paddy Power, will take over in August 2012 after a lengthy stint of enforced gardening. The company still need to find a new Chairman with Ed Wray intending to stand down. Last week, Chief Commercial Officer Niall Wass announced he was leaving the firm after missing out on the CEO job. He's off to an even bigger money-grubber firm in the short-term loaners Wonga. No great loss there, he has been high up the company through a lot of their woes. It is expected that Corcoran will bring in several people to take key posts. Andrew Black sold off around £1.5m of shares, apparently for a new tech firm investment he's involved with. It's not as if he's cashing out just out yet, his stake in Betfair is still valued at around £75m.

Denmark and Spain are ready to open up for licensing, with several international firms lining up to apply. Meanwhile in Greece, why would you bother when the economy is such a basket case? In France, the government have achieved their objective of expanding the business of the local former monopolies at the same time as pissing off all the foreign firms who are rightfully pissed off at the ridiculous taxation regime in place. Similarly, other firms who haven't restricted French customers and aren't blocked are enjoying additional business as the French punters who get wise about the ridiculous margins forced upon locally-licensed operators force them to be uncompetitive. Unibet will be handing in their French licence and cashing in on the marketing expenditure of EurosportBet whose owners they have just purchased. Why waste money on advertising heavily, when you can get someone else to do it for you, then only pay €5m for the firm? Sounds like smart business to me....

In Australia, the hopes of anyone getting any money back from SportsAlive are very slim. The appeal decision in the race fields legislation case between Racing NSW and Sportsbet & Betfair is getting closer, and the national racing industry might finally be able to set a consistent policy nationwide in relation to betting operators. Sportingbet management have taken over at Centrebet with mass redundancies being made.

And in the States, they're still bumbling around trying to get sports betting legalised. I reckon I'll have grandkids first....


Sorry about the quiet period folks, have been off on paternity leave :)

Comments

  1. The Market Examiner22 November 2011 at 23:26

    Thanks for the updates Scott, and congratulations on your new arrival!

    Hope all going well.
    Sam

    ReplyDelete

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