PMU's last results as monopoly: online bets up 22%
Pari Mutuel Urbain (PMU), Europe's largest betting organisation, has revealed its year-end results, the French off-course tote's final set of results before its internet betting monopoly ends in June.
PARI Mutuel Urbain (PMU), Europe’s largest betting organisation, has revealed its year-end results, the French off-course tote’s final set of results before its internet betting monopoly ends in June.
The French monopoly, which will this summer go head to head with private operators for the first time following France’s National Assembly having voted in favour of opening the egaming market to international competition last week, saw a 22% year-on-year (YoY) increase in online bets to 661m in 2009, while overall turnover inched up 0.4% to 9.3bn.
However its net profit, which is repaid to the horse racing industry, fell 0.7% to 731m, from 737m the previous year, reflecting higher costs associated with ventures such as its Equidia horse racing TV channel.
Speaking at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday, PMU chairman and managing director Philippe Germond described the results as “satisfactory” given the French economy and “the amount wagered with illegal operators.”
PMU, which returned 1.1bn to the French government in taxes in 2009, will expand into fixed-odds sports betting and online poker once the market opens in June, for which it has partnered with Paddy Power and Orbis and PartyGaming respectively.
PMU said its Pmu.Fr website currently has around 300,000 active clients. The website will be relaunched in early May with a single wallet allowing customers to place bets via PMU’s 10,400 land-based outlets as well as via the internet, ahead of the French market opening.
Germond said that although the PMU would pursue “an aggressive strategy to maintain growth of its core business” (pari-mutuel horse race betting), he believed it was “in running order to take a leading position as a global operator.”
Germond said: “The goal is to make pmu.fr one of the top three French sites for sports betting.”
Deals signed by PMU ahead of its diversification into fixed-odds sports betting this year include a partnership signed in January with the French Football Federation, and the renewal of its 20-year-long sponsorship of the green jersey in cycling’s Tour de France.
For more on the French market, see this week’s News to Know: slim chance in France news round-up.