Punters gambling on the football World Cup helped bookmaker William Hill score a 26% boost in underlying profits, the company said today.
The tournament in Japan and South Korea last summer brought in £13m of “gross wins” for the high street bookmaker.
Chief executive David Harding said the event had further stimulated betting activity and enabled the company to recruit new customers.
The London-based group made record profits in 2002, posting underlying profits of £141.4m for the year to 31 December today.
Changes in UK betting rules in 2001 – in which bookmakers’ gross profit rather than customers’ stakes is taxed – also boosted the company which floated on the London Stock Exchange in June.
Harding said: “From the day of the introduction of the new tax there has been clear evidence of customers recycling the money saved on deductions into more and bigger bets.”
Harding said it was hard to quantify how much the £13m gross wins from the World Cup was money which would have come in otherwise, but estimated that at least £5m was purely from the event.
The company said the current year had started strongly with gross wins up 20% in the nine weeks to 4 March, compared with the same period last year.
Analysts are forecasting underlying profits of around £147m in 2003 although finance director Tom Singer added: “Clearly a lot of analysts will revise their numbers in light of today’s
announcement.”
However, Harding said the group was well placed to benefit from opportunities in the gambling sector this year but cautioned that bookmakers were still subject to the whim of luck.
“In the short term results can go for or against us,” he said.
Under current government plans to liberalise gambling rules in the UK – which would end restrictions dating back 30 years and pave the way for a dramatic expansion of casinos, bingo halls and amusement arcades – Mr Harding said the group would keep an open mind on whether to consider operating casinos.
He said that as long as the group continued to get healthy growth from its current business it would stay within that field but added “you can never say never”.
“If after deregulation growth in casinos is stronger than in fixed odds betting then we would be crazy not to look at it,” he said.
Bottom line pretax profits lifted to £32.4m in the 52 weeks to 31 December, compared with £27.3m in the 53 weeks to 1 January 2002 while turnover lifted to £3.36bn from £2.45bn.
