Will UKBetting Sell Its Gaming Division?
Published: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 Online-Casinos.com
WILL ONLINE GAMBLING GROUP UKBETTING SELL ITS GAMING DIVISION?
Strong hints that a sale is being considered
The UK Telegraph reports that British online gambling group UKbetting could hive off its gaming arm in the future. Peter Dubens, the chairman of website group UKbetting, reportedly gave a strong hint to this effect, saying that the company could sell off its gaming arm to concentrate on its content business, such as the popular fans' site Football365.
According to the Telegraph, Dubens said: "Logically, there's an argument for hiving off the gaming side." His comments came a month after it was rumoured that PartyGaming was looking at the company as a possible acquisition. A deal to sell off the gaming business to PartyGaming would make sense, allowing the poker giant to diversify more into Europe and ridding UKbetting of its least profitable business.
UKbetting was reporting its first ever half-year profit, substantially helped by an increase in advertising revenues, up 34 percent to GBP 1.74 million, an increase fuelled by fans posting their own video clips on Teamtalk.com, which drove up the number of visitors to the site.
Addressing the problems in the USA, Dubens reiterated that the company would not take bets from America and said the group would concentrate its expansion on launching multilingual versions of Oddschecker.com.
The group reported a first-half pre-tax profit of GBP 197 000, compared with a loss of GBP 405 000 a year ago on turnover up 12 percent to GNP 62.4 million.
