Digital Wager Wire highlights the most important events impacting the domestic and international sports betting and gaming industry each week throughout the year.
Industry Rumors Suggest Bet365 May Be for Sale
C-suite executives from the family-owned British gaming company, Bet365, have had preliminary conversations with major US banks and financiers. This has led to speculation that the international gaming company will be on the market sooner rather than later.
Family Legacy and Recent Moves
It was also reported that the soccer club the company owns has been transferred to John Coates, brother of the company matriarch, Denise. This transfer will guarantee that the club stays in the Coates family and will not be part of any sale. And in another related move, Bet365 has reportedly pulled out of China.
“It would be very difficult to have China exposure given the level of scrutiny that might be applied in the US, and why would you have a football club attached? That’s a family legacy,” said Paul Leyland, the director of the gambling consultancy Regulus Partners.
As for the company leader, Denise Coates, she has been at the helm of the company for 25 years and has masterfully navigated the enterprise from a local bricks-and-mortar betting den started by her father, Peter, into a 21st-century digital gaming dynamo.
Although the cost of purchasing Bet365 won’t come cheap, as Eilers & Krejcik Gaming (EKG) analysts have estimated its value at $12 billion, it could be a much more viable way to enter the ferociously competitive mobile sports betting and iGaming market than to start from scratch.
Expansion in the US Market
Bet365 has proven to be a European gaming powerhouse, but its share of the mobile sports betting market in the US is only about 3%, approximately the same as struggling ESPN Bet. However, the company continues to expand its US footprint to where it now operates in 13 US states and is expected to gain licenses in many more.
“There’s more money chasing gambling than there are gambling companies that are investable,” said EKG’s Leyland.
“Now feels like a very good time to explore exit opportunities, and the timing feels right with Denise turning 60 in two years’ time,” said EKG analyst Alun Bowden.
Bowden also added, “For decades people have been telling me the one business they wish they could invest in was Bet365, and while there is a bit of an industry consensus that they are a fading star, they remain one of, if not the best, online sports betting business in the world, with huge headroom for growth in casino, the US, and many other markets. I don’t think they will have many problems.”
151st Kentucky Derby Sets Records
Journalism may have been the 3-1 odds-on favorite, but it was 7-1 Sovereignty that outdueled the Santa Anita Derby winner on a muddy track. And while that highly anticipated race drew plenty of viewers, more importantly, it raked in plenty of dollars. A Derby record of $234.4 million in all-sources wagering broke last year’s record of $210.7 million.
But the Derby Day card and Derby Week also set high-water marks, with the former generating $349 million in wagers, a 9% increase over last year’s Derby Day program. The betting on Derby Week revealed $473.9 million this year, an increase of over $27 million from last year.
Churchill Downs CEO Bill Carstanjen was somewhat tempered in his remarks during a conference call with investors shortly before Derby Week. Although Carstanjen insisted the numbers would be comparable to last year, he did not predict the record-setting trifecta that included revenue records for Derby Week, the Derby card, and the Kentucky Derby itself.
After the call, Citizens analyst Jordan Bender wrote in a note to his clients, “The company faces a tough comp with the running of the 150th last year, and we get the sense, speaking with management, that consumer ‘hesitancy,’ which was mentioned seven times on the call, could be viewed as a negative driver of pricing in the month leading into the Derby.”
