Greek gambling monopoly sees net profit fall

Lottery and betting operator OPAP experienced a net profit decrease by more than one third during the second quarter of the year.

Greece.- OPAP, the betting and lottery monopoly operator from Greece revealed that net profit decreased by one third during the three month period ended June 30. One of the reasons why the numbers fell during the second quarter is that revenue declines and costs of new products increased.

Revenue was 2.5 percent down when compared to the same period last year to US$394 million. Moreover, earnings decreased almost 24 percent to US$52 million, whilst net profit was 33.7 percent down to US$26 million. Damian Cope, CEO of OPAP, said that the results were noteworthy as the second quarter of 2016 numbers were obtained during the Euro 2016 football tournament.

Furthermore, total betting revenue only decreased 1.2 percent to US$111 million, mainly due to the football tournament being overshadowed by a new product release in April. Another modality that experienced a loss was lottery, as its revenue decreased 8.4 percent to US$229 million. On the other hand, Instant & Passives experienced a 6.6 percent increase to US$46 million, and the VLT category added US$8.9 million.

Last month, Finance Ministry of Greece proposed that the number of video lottery machines operated by Europe’s fourth biggest betting firm should be 25k, down 10k from the 35k that the country legislation currently stipulates. The betting and lottery monopoly operator confirmed earlier this year that they will unveil 16.5k video lottery terminals (VLTs) by May 2018.