2 Oct
It has been a pretty good year on the financial front for England-based gaming company Bet365. The company recently released their earnings for the 2014-2015 financial year, and earnings are up on almost all fronts.
Bet365 announced that it had made £409 million (around US$619.8 million) in profit for the year, a sharp increase on the £321 million (around US$486 million at today’s conversion rate) it had made in the 2013-14 year. Total revenue for the company increased by 15% in 2014-15 to £1.5 billion (around US$2.27 billion).
It is unclear just how much online poker contributed to that revenue as the company did not reveal the full figures for its internet casino operations. However, Bet365 did reveal that revenue for its iPoker-networked poker offering increased by 3% during the last financial year.
That comes as little surprise given that most of the financial year actually fell in 2014, when the majority of the online poker industry prospered. In that year, the iPoker network was constantly the third largest in terms of player traffic, with the site having often obtained a seven day average of 2000 plus players.
It was an overall strong year for online poker, which was represented in Bet365’s three per cent increase. However, the online poker market has been on a general decline since the start of the 2015-16 financial year, which will make it difficult for the company to have a similar revenue increase this time around.
Sports betting turnover for the company also increased during the 2014-15 financial year, which was partly attributed to the 2014 football World Cup. In-play betting wagers comprised three quarters of the total sports betting turnover, but mobile betting proved to be of growing significance to the company as it increased by 59% during the year.
Perhaps of the most notable points in Bet365’s 2014-15 financials was the performance of English Premier League football club Stoke City, which is owned by the company. The club made a profit of £800,000 (around US$1.21 million) over the year, which was a drastic contrast to the £5 million (around US$7.58 million) loss it suffered in the previous financial year.
