By Jess Jones
Entain shares fell as much as five per cent on Thursday after the Ladbrokes-owner suffered from weak sport revenues and a lower forecast for the year.
The London-listed gambling firm reported that bad sports results caused sporting revenue to tumble 15 per cent from the previous quarter. Entain said this impacted earnings before tax by around £45m.
From July to September, total online gaming revenue was down six per cent. Entain expects online profits to land somewhere between 24 and 25 per cent in 2023, down from the 27.1 per cent last year.
It comes as stringent new government gambling regulations start to hit gambling companies, introducing a statutory levy and stricter checks on losses.
The company said it expects online gaming revenue to return to the green in 2024 but still in “low single digits”.
Shares slowly began to tick back up, rising to over three per cent around midday, before diving back down to five per cent again in the afternoon.
Peel Hunt analyst Ivor Jones said the sporting losses do “not appear to reflect a structural problem, and may be recovered in the balance of the year, when there is plenty of sport.”
The Champions League is underway and last week the Premier League revealed the festive football schedule. In the US, the NFL is in its 104th season.
At noon on Thursday, Entain presented a strategic update. It outlined plans to return the group to growth of at least seven per cent from 2025, improve online margins to 28 per cent by 2026 and find net cost savings of £70m by 2025.
