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In an interview with This Is Money, Sportingbet CEO Andrew McIver disclosed that his company is expecting to take in around 35,000 bets an hour on this coming weekend’s Premiership matches as the season comes to a climax.
Sportingbet.com has 250,000 regular customers who stake abut £15 a time and McIver says: 'We're aimed at keen fans for whom gambling is an important part of their sport.'
This Is Money noted that only 7 percent of the company’s profit comes from Great Britain, where Sportingbet is based. The brunt of its revenue stream is derived from Greece, Spain, Turkey and Australia.
None of it comes from the US. Sportingbet pulled out of that market once the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was passed in October of 2006. The company just paid £21m to the US Department of Justice, which allows company officials to travel to and from the States without prosecution. PartyGaming entered into a similar agreement but paid a fine approximately five times as much.
“It's always a bit of an anti-climax when something like that is finally settled, but it was a no-brainer that we should pay the money and move on,” he says.
“If we hadn't done, people would have always thought that there was some reason why. And it paves the way for the future. We'd love to go back into the US if it opened up again, but we'd only go back if it was fully regulated.”
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
