By Business & Finance 
Aine Flanagan, MD Commercial UK and Ireland, Paddy Power Betfair (right), accepts the Business & Finance Company of the Month award for November 2016 from Brian O’Neill, strategic marketing director, Friends First (left) and Ian Hyland, publisher and CEO, Business & Finance Media Group (centre)
Paddy Power Betfair has reported a rise in revenue, despite the company’s claims it lost £5m on the US presidential election.
During 2016, revenue increased 18% to almost €1.8bn at the bookies giant and recent recipient of the Business & Finance Company of the Month award.
In a trading update for the three months to the end of December, the company said it recorded positive sportsbook staking growth, even though betting results favoured its customers.
“We estimate that the impact on group revenue from the customer-friendly results, before any benefit from the re-cycling of winnings, was approximately £40m in the quarter. The impact on profitability of these results was partially offset by lower than expected marketing and staff costs,” the company said.
Surprisingly, revenues were down 3% for the group’s online sector. However, its Australian division recorded an 18% increase in revenue.
Back in November the company announced that in its full-year profit forecast the company was experiencing good trading performance on the back of a slide in sterling and big betting numbers during Euro 2016.
CEO Breon Corcoran commented: “We are continuing to focus on building a stronger combined operation by exploiting the unique assets and capabilities of each legacy business, and on using our scale to better serve our customers.”
He continued: “Work is under way to combine the best of Betfair and Paddy Power’s technology into a multi-brand, multi-channel, multi-jurisdictional platform that will start to unlock the full potential of the group’s scale and will lead to increased pace of development and faster roll-out of new products.”
