Daily Post
LIVERPOOL-BASED betting firm Sportech made a loss of £800,000 last year, despite increasing turnover by 50% to a record £497m.
The company, which operates Littlewoods Football Pools, Littlewoods casino.com and Littlewoods poker.com, lost out to the tune of £3.2m when a marketing campaign failed to drum up new Pools business.
Roger Withers, Sportech's acting managing director, said: "We are not despondent. We've still got 1m people who enter every week, we've still got lots of door-to-door collectors, collectors in factories, offices, through convenience stores and on the web.
"We're going to continue to build those forms of distributions and we're also looking for opportunities to introduce sympathetic products to that same audience."
Sportech - which made a £3.5m profit in 2003 - said the majority of its increased turnover was down to the popularity of its online casino and poker games.
The company, which is based in Wavertree Technology Park, said its five- year ITV "red button" interactive television deal, launched in March 2004, had attracted 25,000 customer registrations to date. However active customer numbers and average win levels have remained low.
Mr Withers said: "We're less than a year into this contract and we'd all like these things to hit the ground running but, realistically, this is something that viewers will get used to over time."
He said ITV would be increasing its promotion of the games by using contextual programming - linking games to programmes including Coronation Street and afternoon chat shows like Today with Des and Mel.
The midnight-4am audience will also be targeted with harder gambling including virtual horseracing.
Mr Withers acknowleged that the gaming facility was not available to all television viewers but said the required technology was under development.
The company is also on track to exit the scratchcard side of its business by the end of the first half of 2005, after they made a £600,000 loss.
