Australian Bookmaker Performs While Bigger Operations Flounder

[Ian_go]

Centrebet came to an Australian Stock Exchange public listing on July 13th, 2006. This was the very day a well established player departed. Betcorp, a dual listed gaming company left the ASX which it listed on in 1999, saying its listing on London's Alternative Investment Market would “stimulate greater interest from investors”. On October 20th of the same year, just one week after President Bush signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, Betcorp announced the sale of its entire online gambling operations to US facing online gaming giant Bodog. Betcorp could have never predicted that the US government would pass laws effectively banning online gaming by US residents, and therefore ending Betcorp’s most profitable operations.


After the US Mid-term elections the chairman of Centrebet questioned whether the anti-igaming laws would be enforced under the new Democrat-led US Congress. It would seam the power holding Dems have bigger fish to fry at present, as the laws still stands and the US Department of Justice has continued with its plans to reign in those companies and individuals connected with the business of online gaming. Centrebet's chairman John Kelly may have been a little off target with that line of enquiry, but the performance of Centrebet can’t be faulted. Yesterday the company’s stock price soared to a new high after the company said it remained ahead of its 2007 full-year prospectus forecasts. Centrebet put the surge down to "growth in ... turnover, and improvement in ... risk management" and "favourable" winnings from sporting and other wagerable events. This while the publicly traded gaming companies watched their share prices dwindle. How exactly has a sports book that primarily caters to a country of just 20 million continued to perform, while others faltered? Centrebet was purchased from the Jupiter corporation (owners of some of Australia’s larger land casinos) in 2003 by two of Sydney's best known bookmakers, Con and Peter Kafataris. The Kafataris brothers are more