Online Casino and Sportsbetting a Savior
You know that a company is having troubles when it can’t seem to turn a profit
from land casino gambling revenue. This is the case with the Rank Group; Rank
has gambling ventures in both the online casino and land-based gambling
industries, yet has announced that the company’s internet gambling subsidiary is
perhaps the only real bright spot in the company’ second half of 2007 results.
Though the official reports are not yet in (because the year is not yet over)
the company announced that it would not be sending out final dividends for the
year because the company’s land casinos and bingo operations have not turned the
profit that was initially anticipated.
But the BlueSquare subsidiary which handles the Rank group’s online casinos and
sportsbetting operations is running strong according to the company’s recent
reports. Because of changes in the land-based gambling laws, specifically
smoking in the clubs and casinos, Rank has reported that fewer players are coming
to the land-based casinos, and once there, they are spending less than they did
prior to the smoking ban.
The Chief Executive at Rank, Ian Burke, remarks on where the company will focus
for the land-based gambling industry if not the online casinos industry. He
notes, "Having stabilised the revenues and taken actions on the cost we now have
to rebuild the admissions.”
But that hasn’t affected the online casinos, where players can enjoy gambling
from the comfort of their own home, and besides the September regulations in the
UK the industry is still going strong. Rank reports that it anticipates that
BlueSure will continue to show strong revenue increases in the coming year
largely because of a new white label deal with 888.com, as well as a increase in
traffic at the company’s online casinos bingo site: Meccabingo.com.
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