Ladbrokes Poker Revenue Falls As Competition Heats Up

Ladbrokes, one of the UK’s leading bookmaking firms, today published its preliminary results for year-end December 2007. While the company saw both gross win and profit before tax grow significantly, poker remained in the doldrums.

The company saw gross win increase 30 percent to £1.29 billion by December 2007 year-on-year, while profit before tax jumped 45 percent to a new record of £344.2 million in the same period.

However, Ladbrokes Poker was considerably less buoyant. “The competitive landscape remains tough for poker with high customer acquisition costs and margins squeezed by rakeback and other promotional offers,” the company said in its report on the accounts.

“Unique active players across our range of products increased 9.4 percent to 601,000. The acquisition of Sponsio, our Nordic marketing partner, in January 2007 helped us to increase our profit conversion from 33.0 percent of net gaming revenue in 2006 to 38.3 percent in 2007.

“Poker net revenue declined by 11.4 percent to £31 million, impacted by increased competition in our key European markets. Unique active players for the year were down 1.9 percent at 151,000 and yield per unique active player was down 9.7 percent to £205.

“Net revenue for the second half declined year on year by 7.8 percent to £15.3 million. In the second half our customer loyalty programme was enhanced and 3D poker was soft-launched in November. The popular Ladbrokes Poker Cruise took place early in 2008, and the coming year will see further developments to the site, including multi-currency tables and a full launch of the new 3D application, complemented by a more aggressive affiliates programme.

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