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 recently announced that revenues at the bookmaker giant have jumped 25% to €454m.
In its full-year profit forecast Paddy Power Betfair is experiencing good trading performance on the back of a slide in sterling and big betting numbers during Euro 2016. The company has stated that revenue has risen by 25% to €454m in the three months to the end of September.
Turnover grew 15% while earnings rose 53% to £113m. The company also expects underlying earnings for the full year to come in at £405m, well above what was anticipated.
As a result of Euro 2016, sportsbook stakes were up 26% to £2.4bn during the summer period.
CEO Breon Corcoran commented: “This was another good quarter for Paddy Power Betfair. 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.”
GOING MOBILE
When the Paddy Power-Betfair merger took place in 2015, the respective boards announced that they had reached agreement on the terms of a recommended all-share merger to be called Paddy Power Betfair.
Paddy Power Betfair is an international, multi-channel betting business with operations in the UK, Ireland, Australia, the US and across Europe. The company is now split into four divisions:
- Online, which boasts two of Europe’s leading online sports betting and gaming brands, Paddy Power and Betfair;
- Australia, which, under the Sportsbet brand, is the market leader in the fast-growing Australian online betting market;
- US, which combines TVG, the leading horse-racing TV and betting network in the USA, and two Betfair operations in New Jersey, an online casino and a racing exchange;
- Retail, which operates 600 Paddy Power betting shops across the UK and Ireland, employing almost 5000 people.
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
The new combined group is one of the world’s largest public online betting and gaming companies by revenue. The merger has resulted in Paddy Power shareholders owning 52% of Paddy Power Betfair and Betfair shareholders owning 48%.
No bookmaker has taken advantage of the explosion in online gambling to quite the same extent that Paddy Power Betfair has. The company is also a leader in the growing mobile gambling market and has the largest market share in the industry.
About the CEO
The CEO of the recently merged entity is Breon Corcoran, the Betfair CEO who previously had a stellar career at Paddy Power, joining in 2001 and playing a pivotal role in its growth under chief executive Patrick Kennedy.
Corcoran rose through the role of managing director (non-retail and development) and joined the board in 2004, becoming chief operating officer in August 2010.
He previously worked at JP Morgan and Bankers Trust.
When he joined Betfair the share price was languishing well below its October 2010 flotation level.
He turned things around in spectacular fashion, the share price recovering and the company expanding in markets such as Italy, the US and Ireland.
The Mullingar man is a TCD and Insead graduate.
