SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
bwin.party Entertainment the operator at the centre of a £908 million reverse takeover by GVC Holdings, issued a Q2 trading update (period ending 30 June).
Giving insights into its performance bwin.party governance stated that igaming revenue was in-line with expectations, whilst sports betting turnover was ahead of expectations, despite margins being below normalised levels.
The operators performance has been supported by a strong growth in mobile igaming and sports betting revenues.
bwin.party has continued its operational restructure, with the sale of non-core assets generating 36 million, in-line with the operators target of €30-€50 million. Governance further noted that its new label-led structure focused on delivering operational improvements would generate at least €15m of planned cost savings for 2015
Norbert Teufelberger, CEO of bwin.party, said:
“Despite challenging comparatives together with the impact of EU VAT and POC tax, we are pleased with our business performance in the first half. We have completed our new organisational set-up and streamlined our decision-making processes, significantly improving our operational performance.
“Sports volumes are ahead of last year despite the 2014 World Cup, although poor sporting results drove gross win margins lower, holding back revenue performance in the period. Casino betting volumes have also remained strong and in poker we are closing the gap on last year. Our bingo revenue was in-line with last year but our UK business now attracts the POC tax that was introduced in December 2014.
“We have made good progress on the disposal of our non-core assets with World Poker Tour, Winners[2] and United Games all sold during the second quarter and we have already reached our target range of €30m to €50m of disposal proceeds. As well as generating cash, these disposals are also helping us to reduce the complexity within our business.
NB…bwin.party is set to release its H1 2015 performance results on 30 August
