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Casino machines save Hill after web bets flop
Robert Lea, Evening Standard27 Feb 2008
The inexorable attraction for punters to pour their cash into the betting shop casino machines has helped William Hill partly offset a woeful performance online, where the nation's gamblers are preferring other bookmakers' websites.
Latest figures from William Hill reveals how the virtual roulette wheels and blackjack tables have transformed the fortunes of the betting shops.
Last year the group made more than £200 million from the betting shop casino games - £466 a week from each of its 8382 machines around the country known in the industry as FOBTs, or fixed odds betting terminals.
The amount would have been far more - £504 a week or more than £26,000 a year for a single machine - but for the new amusement machine levy.
Hill's new chief executive Ralph Topping, the former number two to David Harding who quit the company last summer, said that was a strong performance and came despite the smoking ban which many thought would empty betting offices around the country.
"We are not like the bingo halls [which have suffered from the ban], because generally speaking the dwell time in our offices can be counted in minutes rather than hours," he said.
But he did concede that the longer betting shop opening hours have helped the group's take and offset the 11% rise in costs to keep the shops open in the evening.
The tsunami of takings from the FOBT machines has seen the bookmakers come under attack for encouraging problem gamblers and speculation has increased that the Government will act either to limit the amount of money that can be won or to put the machines on a more punitive tax regime.
Topping declined to admit he was resigned to a new regime, but said: "The Government will do what the Government will do."
But Hill's figures, which showed a 2% fall in group profits to £287 million for 2007, today laid open the extent to which its internet operation is failing.
At a time of exponential growth of gambling on the web, Hill said its revenues actually fell by nearly 9% last year. That led to a 17% crash in internet profits in the year to £50.9 million, more than £10 million worse than last year.
Hill's web offering has been plagued by technical and upgrade problems but, worse for it and the paying punter, it has not been able to offer "betting-in-running", the web-enabled craze of being able to punt on a horserace or football match second by second.
"We will not be up and running for 'betting-in-running' until October. But 'William Hill' is a very strong brand which will attract customers and you can bet there will be significant marketing campaign at the time," said Topping.
The total dividend is raised by 7% to 23.25p.
Reader views (1)
i would like to sat that the sums of takings from these machine is very very high they are all crocked and only pay out at very small odds but take in large ammounts for the bookies and this is not fair on the general public who just keep playing and losing like my self for example who has sppent thousands of pounds on this addiction and lost a number of relationships down o these machines and can count on both hands how many times ive won anydecent amount of money and not once evr won over 500 pounds but have put in thousands and thousands of pounds and always get a very poor qality play for my moneys worth
i feel let down by society and the goverment for allowing these machines into society its clear they are making extreme amounts of money out of many peoples misery offering a type of false hope to a large number of losers even those that win are only winners on the day but most days they are losers..
i only hope they are stopped and banned and not allowed to be officly allowed to operate at the cost of the general public.........
they are nothing more than legised thiefs
- John, london uk, 17/06/2009 22:37
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