Unibet acquires Bet24 11.04.2012

Todays headline in online sports betting is Unibets successful attempt to buy Bet24. Bet24 is held by the company Nordic betting Limited in Malta and offer games on among other domains: www.bet24.dk and www.bet24.com.

The deal

According to several news sources Unibet intend to keep the Bet24 brand for now but migrate the customer base over to their own product platform by time. Allthought they are careful to say anything about synergies, they hinted that they expect to see €2 to 3M saved in the first year of operations.

As part of the transaction, Unibet said that it is transferring 45 Nordic Betting Ltd employes to ts Maltese operations. This in order to be compliant with Maltese law and regulations applicable to the transfer of businesses. According to sources close to the deal these 45 people account for about 50% of the Nordic Betting Limited group.

The cost of doing business: 13.5M euro in cash. According to Maltatoday.com this is 1.2857 x the Nordic Betting Ltd gross winning revenue. This calculated on consistent basis with Unibet accounting policies. The Nordic Betting Ltd gross winning revenue for its latest financial year ended 31 December 2011. was approximately €10.5 million.

Last November Unibet also acquired EurosportBet France from Solfive that had earlier acquired control of the broadcaster’s betting activities.

Completion of the transaction is subject to regulatory clearance, where required, and is expected to take place before the end of the second quarter of 2012.

The Unibet stock traded above 190SEK for a short time this morning, but has been pulled back to the 184-187SEK range for most of the trading day so far. Investors clearly haven't made up their minds on this one yet.

Our two cents

This clearly indicates that Unibet intends to build strong, local licensed presences according to the new reality in European Gaming. Bet24 has an excellent brand name in Denmark. According to Unibet they and Bet24 were pretty much of equal size in the danish market. This should position Unibet as the second largest player in this market, only beaten by the state monopoly. Time will tell if they can capitalize on this opportunity.

We at Howtobet.net also wonder what this will mean for Parspro Ltd, the company that licensed out its software to be used as platform for taking bets. They have lost a bit of business lately, and this surely must create head ache for the Iclandic vendor.