Since being founded ten years ago, Sportingbet has grown significantly to become a major player in the online betting industry. Its market-leading European sports betting platform now offers over 8,000 sports betting markets on a busy trading day, covering a huge range of sports, leagues and bet types supplemented by revenues generated from casino, poker and other betting games. Sportingbet branded websites are now available in 23 different languages and the customer call centre located in Dublin, is able to answer queries in 42 languages.
Sportingbet's operations are focused on Europe, Australia and a burgeoning Emerging Markets business. The European operation is based in the Channel Islands, operating under a licence provided by the Alderney Gambling Control Commission. This is supported by an operational centre in Dublin providing customer services and administrative support, together with an IT function located in London. The Group’s Australian division is based in Darwin, operating under a license provided by the Northern Territories Government. In total, the Group now employs over 500 people.
Sport and sports betting continues to be at the heart of the Sportingbet business. Sports betting revenues accounted for approximately 64% (2008: 60%) of Group NGR. During the year significant additional functionality was added to the sports product offerings in response to consumer demand. In November 2008, live web-streaming of sport was made available to our European customer base to complement the Group’s in-running betting product ("in:play"). This functionality allows customers to watch the game live on their PC, whilst placing bets on a wide variety of outcomes during the event. The demand for in:play betting is significant and now accounts for 56% of amounts wagered in Europe. In order to further support the demand for this product, Sportingbet now provides a round-the-clock in-running betting service on an ever wider variety of events irrespective of an event’s location or time zone.
