888 Holdings, the online gambling company behind 888 Poker, recently announced that it had recorded a strong poker revenue stream in its Spanish market. The company profits noted a spike of 29 percent which was worth a total of $22 million. These results were compared to the profits that the company generated last year in its third quarter. Last year, in 2012 888 Poker made $18 million.
This growth is noteworthy because, 888 Poker is succeeding and doing well while other gambling companies are struggling to make a profit in their poker sectors.
Companies like bwin.party and Playtech were not able to make a good run but 888 Poker thrived in its Spanish sector.
According to Brian Mattingley, the chief executive of 888 Poker,
Poker in Spain has assisted significantly in the growth of our poker business. Since we entered [Spain], we have become second in the market with 20 per cent share.
“Our poker product is attractive to the casual player, and that’s our market…we actually encourage the fish to come into our pool and we dissuade sharks, or professional poker players.
Another point to be noted was the substantial increase of player traffic at the 888 Poker Spanish site. The players increased by 14 percent which was a total of 349,000 active players.
According to Nick Batram, an analyst at Peel Hunt, 888 Poker has entered a new market and has made the most of it. “The thing that stands out for me is that 888 have managed to go into a newly regulated market, such as Spain, and make it work almost immediately. This year, 888 Spanish business will probably break even and next year should be profitable versus our original expectation of losses as they built up the brand in the market.”
The company recorded a good growth trend and recorded profits of 50% as compared to last year. The profit soared from 42 million to 63 million from last year to this year. Mattingley stated,
Our core business has continued to perform well during the quarter, with our targeted marketing campaigns contributing towards our ongoing success and Spain outperforming our expectations. The final quarter has started positively with average daily revenues more than seven percent ahead of the strong Q4 2011. A disciplined approach to our costs, and our analytics driven marketing spend proving highly efficient, means we now expect our EBITDA for the full year to be significantly ahead of current market expectations
