News in brief: Betfair; Intralot; Wagerflex; Spiral Solutions; William Hill...
Betfair has opened a new Dublin office, with newspapers suggesting that the company is considering moving offshore.
Betfair has opened a new Dublin office to house its data centre and telebetting operators, as well as other departments of the business, and is currently recruiting traders. City A.M newspaper suggested this morning that the move could be considered as a warning to the UK government to take action over proposed tax increases including the 10% horseracing levy. Last year the betting exchange paid £6.1m in payments plus another £1.25m voluntary payment due to its overseas customers betting on horseracing. By moving offshore, in a similar move to recently re-located William Hill, Betfair could save millions, the paper suggested. Tessa Murray, director of corporate communications at Betfair, told eGaming Review: “the office in Dublin gives us full flexibility as a business but there are no immediate plans to go offshore”. Reuters has also reported that Betfair has attracted enough orders from investors to cover all the shares offered for its London listing, according to two banking sources close to the transaction. The offer of around 10 percent of Betfair was oversubscribed after the first day of book building which launched Thursday, the sources said.
Intralot has been awarded a five-year sports betting licence by French regulator ARJEL with an option to extend the deal when it expires. The world’s second largest lottery systems operator said it is planning to apply for additional online horse betting and poker licences in France.
Software provider Iforium has announced that its Wagerflex platform is now ARJEL compliant, as operator Jeux365, which uses the Wagerflex Common Wallet payment system, has launched under a French gaming license.
Spiral Solutions France, a joint venture between Spiral Solutions and Santa Maria Group, is to launch a new online poker room, Mypok, on Microgaming and 888‘s joint poker network in France. The new website, owned by the SOCODEM Group, will be Spiral Solutions France’s second client following the venture’s launch in September with 200% Poker.
William Hill Online has adopted iovation Reputation Manager 360 as part of its fraud prevention strategy. As well as helping the operator combat fraud, it will give it access to iovation’s globally shared device reputation database, which includes reputation data for over 390 million unique computers and Internet devices.