CasinoUK with its new infographic shows how gambling Mergers&Acquisitions’ reached £5bn in 2016, contributing to achieve record revenues by companies.
It is clearly presented that companies which did M&As were the biggest winners among gambling companies which start releasing their Q4 together with full-year 2016 earnings.
Euros were a big factor in companies making record revenues, however, the mergers and acquisitions across the industry played an equal part in their growth.
Ladbrokes Coral Group presented their trading statement in the last week of January 2017 with proforma group operating profit for the full year expected to be within the range of £275m-£285m which represents a 20% increase on 2015.
Paddy Power Betfair (PPB) have also announced the information that they suppose their full-year revenues to raise up to 18% which means around £1.55bn after successful February last year.
M&As weren’t only connected to gaming operators in 2016 as Catena Media acquired a few iGaming affiliates with notable acquisitions such as CasinoUK, AskGamblers as well as regulated US affiliates like USPoker and PlayNJ. After their IPO in February 2016, their share price increase 250%.
On the other hand, William Hill rejected a joint-bid from 888 and Rank of a takeover have reached their profits fall £20mn below expectations – which contributes to a drop of more than £30m from the £291.4m operating profit posted in 2015.
Tabcorp and Tatts were one of the biggest mergers in the gambling industry. They control 95% of Australia’s betting market are expected to come together. It is also expected a merger between FanDuel and DraftKings.
Catena UK’s Head of Marketing Varun Mathure in her comment referring to the gambling M&A scene, said “seeing the results from 2016 it is the clear that operators and affiliates involved in M&As stole a march on the competition. With governments across Europe pursuing regulation of the gambling markets, we can expect to M&A trend to continue.”
