888 Forces Sharkscope to Stop Tournament Tracking, £49m in Losses at Betfair
These are the top gambling news stories here at Gambling911.com Thursday June 27, 2013 (Evening EDT). Follow us on Twitter here.
*888 Forces Removal of Historical Data, Tournament Tracking from Sharkscope - 888 Poker has forced popular public tournament tracking site SharkScope to stop tracking all its poker tournaments, and remove all historical data, according to PokerFuse.com. The site is now prohibited from even mentioning 888 Poker.
“We have offered to implement any kind of 'opt-in’ procedure they would like, in addition to our existing 'opt-out’ and “reset” systems, so at the very least people would still be able to view and publish their own statistics,” a blog post on the Sharkscope site reads. “They have however declined all the options we have put forward.”
*Betfair Reports £49m in Losses - (Reuters) - Betfair is attracting more gamblers to its website with simpler products, the online betting company said on Thursday, defending its strategy after rejection of a 1 billion pound takeover bid.
Launched in 2000 as an innovative online exchange where gamblers could bet against each other, the company now also offers more conventional fixed-odds betting on sports events to cater for a broader audience.
Betfair had floated at 13 pounds in 2010 amid great excitement about the potential of the exchange but the shares had fallen below seven pounds before CVC's approach in April.
Betfair shares edged lower to 823p by 0805 GMT, having slipped since the bid talks failed.
CVC had wanted Betfair to refocus on its betting exchange. But Corcoran is pursuing a plan to broaden and simplify the product range, bringing Betfair into more direct competition with bookmakers including market leader William Hill.
Corcoran refused to go into details of what CVC had wanted to do with the company. Their plan envisaged the chief executive, hired last year from Irish bookmaker Paddy Power, staying on in the top job when the company delisted.
"I'm very happy leading a public company," he said.
SLIMMING DOWN
Betfair has had an 18 percent increase in customer numbers in Britain and Ireland over the last six months, Corcoran said, noting that the new sports product appealed to gamblers who found the exchange model too complex.
"At its core, Betfair is an exchange," said Corcoran. "What we're doing now is giving customers what they get elsewhere but with us they also get the exchange."
Corcoran is slimming down Betfair, pulling out of markets such as Germany, Greece, Russia and Brazil where regulations are not clear cut and also targeting savings of 30 million pounds.
Analyst Ivor Jones of Numis described Betfair as a "work in progress".
"Substantial changes have been made which we believe will pay off, and pay off at an accelerating rate once the revenue effect of withdrawing from some countries diminishes," Jones said in a research note, rating the shares a "Buy".
Betfair reported underlying profit of 73.3 million pounds in the year to the end of April on revenues of 387 million pounds, confirming provisional figures given during its bid defence.
(Writing by Keith Weir, Editing by Brenda Goh and Jane Merriman)
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
