Ladbrokes eyes female pound through Gala Bingo addition

Ladbrokes chief executive Jim Mullen says he is looking forward to welcoming Gala Bingo into the operator’s fold following its imminent merger with parent company Gala Coral.

Speaking to both EGR and analysts yesterday after posting a 41% rise in digital revenues, Mullen described Gala Bingo as a “significant online bingo business” and said the addition of the brand was often overlooked when talking about the merger.

“Online I think we bring a bigger sportsbook but what Gala Coral brings is a bigger gaming business, particularly the Gala Bingo business, which adds that female pound,” Mullen, who will lead the combined business, said.

“Not a lot of people speak about the female pound but there are a lot of women that like to bet and bingo is their main product,” he added.

In its H1 results, Gala Bingo posted net revenues of £47m, which is not too far behind the Euro 2016-boosted Ladbrokes.com sportsbook net revenue figure of £58.3m, albeit across different reporting periods.

Exactly how Ladbrokes goes about leveraging the Gala Bingo business was, according to Mullen, “one for the future”, but the chief exec did appear to confirm Ladbrokes’ Betdaq exchange would be integrated into the Coral sportsbook.

“Absolutely,” Mullen said when asked about the possibility. “There are many opportunities for revenue uplift and that [integrating the exchange into Coral] is just one of them and that’s why we are really excited about the merger.

“A lot of people look at Betdaq and see it just as a customer-facing product,” he added. “It gives us the ability to hedge, it lets us see some market movements and gives us intelligence.

“There are multiple ways on which we can use that product and sometimes I think the narrative is all about the B2C side.”

Mullen was also confident the merger and wider integration process, which Ladbrokes chairman John Kelly yesterday said should be completed by the end of Q1 2017, wouldn’t act as a brake on current performance.

“One of the important notes is that we have been planning the merger for the last six to nine months, probably even more, and the results today prove we haven’t take our eye off the ball,” Mullen said.

The chief exec also looked forward to the start of the new football season with the firm’s sponsorship of the Scottish Professional Football League and the English Football Association “positioning Ladbrokes as a football operator both north and south of the border”.

Mullen said Leicester City’s Premier League victory last season had “reinvigorated” the ante-post betting market with 20% of all bets to date placed on outsiders such as Middlesbrough and Burnley.