Sky Bet owner sees bored casual gamblers turn to online casinos
THE OWNER of Leeds-based Sky Betting and Gaming has revealed the Covid-19 restrictions which forced its high street bookie branches to close is costing the business an estimated £9m-amonth in lost underlying pretax profits for each month lockdowns in the UK and Ireland remain in place.
However, parent company Flutter added that overall it benefited from strong sales in 2020 as lockdowns and restrictions saw bored casual gamblers turn to online casinos in huge numbers, growing global customer numbers by 19 per cent.
Flutter, which also owns Paddy Power, said average monthly customers with Sky Bet were up by 12 per cent in the second half of last year, with Paddy Power’s up by 36 per cent.
In total, around 40 per cent of high street betters used one of the company’s online businesses to gamble on, despite Flutter owning just 5 per cent of betting shops in the UK.
Chief executive Peter Jackson suggested the shift to online could be permanent and, whilst high street bookies will remain, there could be fewer.
He said: “I think there’s definitely going to be a change in people’s shopping habits as a result of this pandemic and I think we’ve seen a real acceleration towards online away from retail. But I don’t believe that retail is dead, I think that we are ultimately pack creatures, we enjoy each other’s company, then I think we will see people returning to retail shops, though I suspect there will be less of them in the future than there are today.”
Globally, total sales soared 106 per cent to £4.4bn in 2020, although pre-tax profits fell from £136m to just £1m due to costs associated with its £9.3bn merger with Canadian rival Stars Group, creating the biggest betting company in the world by revenue.
Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, said: “Despite the extraordinary restrictions it has faced over the past year, Flutter is moving at lightning speed.”
I think there’s definitely going to be a change. Peter Jackson, chief executive of Flutter