As normal I participated in the conference call, but there wasn’t much given away at all during the call and very little insight given into the inner workings and trends within Betfair. The introduction took a couple of minutes and the Q&A about twenty.<\/p>\n
They were keen to point out that the sportsbook was up 39%, but that was only \u00a37.5m vs \u00a35.4m and the exchange shrank by \u00a33.4m so net down overall. They admitted that the sportsbook was uncompetitive but also seemed to indicate that it was mainly non UK areas where the exchange shrank the most. They wouldn’t confirm how the UK had performed. Gaming shrank as well so I suspect Betfair are going to have to spend some money on branding.<\/p>\n
Breon was dismissive of Ladbrokes move for Betdaq.<\/p>\n
Reading between the lines the turnover tax in Australian seems to have bolstered margins there despite the introduction of race card fees, maybe I mis-heard that? But there is continued talk on the ‘pricing’ of the exchange, though it appears no decisions have been made on that just yet.<\/p>\n
Overall a fairly uninformative set of results and conference call. Business seems to be stable, possibly a bit more than expected, but there is no change on guidance for the year.<\/p>\n
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