UK

Despite increasing corporate revenues to £10 billion, UK bookmaker Betfred has posted an operating loss of £76.6 million (52-week period ending 27 September 2015). Filing its annual return with UK Companies House the Manchester-based operator reported that its financial performance had been impacted by increased gambling taxes which lowered operating margins. Furthermore, the bookmaker like its industry competitors was hit …

Prominent UKIP leadership candidate Suzanne Evans has put party politics on hold and backed Andrea Leadsom’s bid to become Conservative party leader.  Evans accepted a free £500 charity bet from Star Sports and backed Leadsom at odds of 5/2. All the winnings will go to Lipoedema UK, a charity that Evans has run since 2011. Evans said of the news: “I’m …

The newly formed Esports Integrity Coalition (ESIC) was announced today with Ian Smith named as Commissioner. Its remit is to bring an end to the culture of match fixing, doping and general cheating which impacts betting, which has plagued esports over the years, and more so as potential windfalls have grown considerably in the recent past. The initial list of members …

Dafabet has announced that they have agreed a new deal to continue as Sunderland AFC’s main sponsor until at least 2019. The company first announced the partnership with Sunderland in the summer of 2015, and will become one of the longest serving principal partners in the club’s history. As part of the deal, Dafabet will undertake a number of match day, …

ICE 2016 ranked in the top three business exhibitions to have taken place in the UK over the past 12 months, according to figures from research agency Fusion. The agency applied the Net Promoter Score (NPS), a metric used by Apple and Amazon to measure the level of customer satisfaction, with ICE 2016 recording an NPS of +53 from exhibition …

The fallout from perhaps the most important political event for the UK in our lifetime has continued this week with Leave campaigner and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage stepping down. With David Cameron also having resigned, and Boris Johnson announcing he won’t be standing in the race for the next Prime Minister, the political betting markets have been in overdrive. In …

Comedian Steve Coogan and former Isle of Man TT rider Guy Martin are 5/1 joint-favourites to replace Chris Evans as lead presenter of BBC’s Top Gear motoring show. This weekend Evans announced that he would not return for a second series of Top Gear, stating that he had tried ‘his best, but it just did not work out’. Publishing an …

Financial advisory group Davy has lowered sector-wide growth forecasts for UK-listed gambling operators as a result of BREXIT. The ‘Leave’ outcome has forced Davy to review the current positions of listed gambling operators as the UK economy faces months of fiscal and legal uncertainty.    Issuing a market note, Davy analysts detailed that UK legacy operators with both large retail …

Following a period of corporate restructuring, London AIM-listed mobile gambling software provider Nektan Plc is confident that it can reverse its financial performance in the second half of 2016. Last week, Nektan governance provided a preliminary update on its H1 2016 performance detailing that it expected to post £4.2 million in net gaming revenues (H1 2015: £1.6 million). The company …

Yorkshire based firm Equotion Ltd has announced two major pieces of news for the company this week. The first is the completion of a significant funding round and the second the appointment of Graham Martin as Non-Executive Chairman. Martin is the Founder of Bonne Terre, the licence holder for Sky Betting & Gaming, and he joins CEO James Waterhouse, Chief Data Scientist …