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 well respected amongst the on-course betting community and have a canny knack for recognizing and acting on opportunity. “Think globally and act locally” is an Australian catch phrase for environmental planning, but the same could be applied to some of Centrebet’s more profitable moves. As betting on popular culture emerged in online bookmaking, Centrebet immediately turned its focus to providing established Australian bettors with specialty Australian proposition bets. The company joined Playtech’s poker network around the same time they bought onboard the company’s casino product in 2004. The move to poker and casino games came relatively late for Centrebet, but the relationship remained after Playtech announced it would no longer take US customers. Centrebet claims a client base of 190,000 plus customers from 80 countries. The US is not amongst these.
But it will not be all plain sailing in the future for Centrebet. Betfair, the UK owned betting exchange has moved into the Australian aggressively and is growing quickly after securing a Tasmanian gaming license. After the US anti-igaming bills were passed, the publicly traded gaming companies fled the US. They regrouped and quickly looked to expand into other markets. Australia and the Southern Hemisphere amongst these. Centrebet has a good understanding of Australian betting culture, and is well established in other betting markets. A part of the company’s growth came in several country key markets in Scandinavia. By concentrating on their core local market and hedging this with expansion elsewhere, Centrebet looks odds-on for a stable future.
