The end of High Roller betting at Ladbrokes due to increased competition

Britain’s biggest bookmaker Ladbrokes has announced that pre-tax profits have fallen by 28 percent, primarily due to a big fall in business from high rollers, who are the punter that typically place bets in excess of £10,000 a go.

The amount and scale of this type of betting has fallen since 2008 as many high rollers working in the financial services industry have either lost their jobs or anticipating smaller bonuses and so operating profits accountable to high rollers have fallen by 55 per cent.

Ladbrokes are still confident that they can weather the storm of the economic slowdown despite the fall in profits from high rollers. However, Chris Bell, chief executive of Ladbrokes, has described it as a set back as high rollers contributed £80.1m of profit during 2008 which is still sizable and valuable given the current challenging environment the firm is operating in.

The telephone betting operations blamed a 10 percent fall in revenue to offshore competition.

It was not all glum as E-gaming revenue increased 20 per cent from £143.5m to £172.2m and the high street betting chain, saw a rise of nearly 5 per cent in gross win, (total bets minus payouts), to £773.9m and overall revenue only fell from £1.23bn to £1.17bn.

Story link: The end of High Roller betting at Ladbrokes due to increased competition