Ladbrokes Moves To Gibraltar

Ladbrokes follows its rival William Hill in moving its web betting to Gibraltar. This move will save one of leading British bookmakers around £7m per year.

Ladbrokes will retain its call centre operations for telephone betting in Britain.

The cost-cutting move comes after the bookmaker announced that its pre-tax profits went down by 3.9% to £131.3m over the last six months.

Chief Executive Chris Bell said trading conditions had worsened since May but the company was still aiming to meet full-year expectations. He added that the bookmaker is planning to sell its Italian retail business and had received some expressions of interest.

On the positive side, Ladbrokes said it had 12,500 new eGaming customer sign-ups – bringing its total to 249,000. It also announced that it will launch a new betting website by December.