Sportingbet Partners With Portsmouth

Sportingbet announced this week it will become the online betting partner for English Premier League football club Portsmouth.

“Sportingbet.com is Europe’s leading online bookmaker and we are delighted to be working with them,” stated a Portsmouth spokesman. “Sportingbet.com has a world-class portfolio of online gambling and gaming products and will provide our fans with a fantastic selection of special bets.”

Sportingbet officials released information that soccer accounts for 65 percent of its sports betting business, with over 42 million plays on soccer coming from around the world each year.

Sportingbet Leaves Italy

Sportingbet has sold its Italian operation to the local management team since expected regulatory changes never materialised and a lack of operational synergy with the group has meant its Italian venture has been loss making since acquisition.

The disposal of Sportingbet’s Italian business is likely to cost £7.1m.

Sportingbet Italia was acquired in May 2006 in anticipation of further liberalisation of online gaming regulation in Italy such as an increase of the maximum payout from €10,000 and being able to offer in-running markets to Italian customers.

These measures never happened as the Italian government instead offered 13,500 land-based licences. This meant further offline outlets for Italian punters to bet at, which requiring operators use specific software for the Italian market and meant Sportingbet Italia has been loss making since acquisition.

Amounts wagered at Sportingbet Italia in the first 11 months of its current financial year were £13.7m with £2m in net gaming revenue, generating an operational loss of approximately £1.5m.

Sportingbet will announce its full year results on 31 July and said it was still confident of reaching full year forecasts of £29m in operating profits.

Sportingbet Launches Its Own Magazine

Digital publishing provider WeClik has produced E-Magazine for Sportingbet.com. This multi-lingual digital magazine will be available to customers of ParadiseCasino.

Titled Jackpot, the ParadiseCasino e-zine is their first-ever interactive digital magazine dedicated to the online casino market and features a revolutionary new interactive rich content format developed by WeClik.

The magazine will be launched in 10 European countries next week. In line with Sportingbet’s localised branding strategy, it will be published simultaneously in 10 different languages – with all user interfaces specially tailored for each local market.

Jackpot will be fully integrated into the Sportingbet.com web site, with registered ParadiseCasino members able to view new editions as soon as they are released.

Punter Wins Over $27,000 With $5 Bet

Sportingbet bettor won $27, 721.72 on a $5 MLB Baseball bet last week.

The punter placed a $5 bet on a total of 14 baseball wagers, including moneylines, runlines and over/unders. All 14 cashed.

The first bet was a moneyline wager on the Los Angeles Angels to beat the Oakland Athletics on the road. The Angels won as a +109 moneyline road dog.

Those winnings – the original stake plus profit – were then placed on the New York Mets to beat the Baltimore Orioles. The Mets won as +112 road underdogs.

That money was bet on a matchup between the Florida Marlins and Boston Red Sox, with the Red Sox cashing as -1.5 runline favorites at +115.

After nine more winning bets – which included five moneyline, three over/under and one runline wagers – the whole amount was placed on the final matchup: the Pittsburgh Pirates at the Minnesota Twins.

The Twins won as -133 moneyline favorites and the bettor suddenly found himself with nearly 28 thousand dollars in profit.

Sportingbet UK Focus

Sportingbet is adjusting its marketing focus on UK. One of the biggest online betting operators plans to increase its share of the sports betting industry in Britain.

The company will shift some of its advertising expenditures from elsewhere in Europe to increase its UK business from its current six percent of company revenues to ten percent in a year and a half. Sportingbet spends almost $100 million on advertising in Europe.

Sportingbet’s new strategy began with signing a sponsorship deal with the Wolverhampton Wanderers.