{"id":74562,"date":"2025-08-17T07:43:41","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T07:43:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/74562\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T07:43:41","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T07:43:41","slug":"club-world-cup-and-summer-tennis-bring-in-the-bets-for-entain-ladbrokes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/74562\/","title":{"rendered":"Club World Cup and summer tennis bring in the bets for Entain | Ladbrokes"},"content":{"rendered":"

A flurry of bets on the football Club World Cup, England\u2019s triumphant European Women\u2019s Championship campaign and summer tennis tournaments helped the UK gambling company Entain to better-than-expected results, helping it brace for looming tax rises in its domestic market<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The owner of brands including Ladbrokes<\/a> and Coral reported an 11% rise in underlying profits to \u00a3583m in the first half of the year, on revenues that rose 3% to nearly \u00a32.6bn.<\/p>\n

At BetMGM, Entain\u2019s 50%-owned US joint-venture, revenues rose by more than a third. US sports betting continues to grow rapidly following the supreme court\u2019s overturning in 2018 of a decades-old ban on the practice.<\/p>\n

But Entain also performed strongly in its home market, with online gambling revenues up 21% in the UK and Ireland.<\/p>\n

Entain said the Club World Cup<\/a>, held in the US earlier this summer, had delivered \u201cfantastic results\u201d for the company, despite a muted response to the tournament in the UK.<\/p>\n

Entain describes Brazil as one of its \u201cmust win\u201d markets, alongside the UK and US, and it has a partnership with the S\u00e3o Paulo team \u2013 and Club World Cup participant \u2013 Palmeiras. The company said this helped boost local interest in betting on the tournament.<\/p>\n

The Club World Cup final, between Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain, was the year\u2019s most popular event by the number of bets taken. The French Open and Wimbledon tennis tournaments also delivered new records for the company, amid surging interest from gamblers in a sport whose design inherently creates opportunities to place rapid-fire wagers.<\/p>\n

Female tennis players have spoken out this year about the abuse they receive, often from gamblers frustrated by having lost bets.<\/p>\n

Entain\u2019s chief executive, Stella David, appointed earlier this year after her predecessor, Gavin Isaacs, departed suddenly after five months<\/a>, said the results showed the company was \u201cgetting stronger, fitter and faster\u201d.<\/p>\n

Entain\u2019s improved fortunes in the UK could cushion the blow if the Treasury goes ahead with plans to target the gambling industry with higher taxes, as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, casts around for ways to plug a fiscal hole.<\/p>\n

Gordon Brown, a former prime minister who also served a decade as chancellor, called recently for gambling duties to increase by \u00a33bn<\/a>, from about \u00a32.5bn at present, to pay for lifting the two-child limit on benefits.<\/p>\n

The Treasury is expected to increase taxes levied on the sector<\/a>, albeit by a smaller amount than Brown has suggested.<\/p>\n

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Speaking to analysts about tax, David said: \u201cPeople should look at the maths and be very careful about where we go forward. There is already a large black market in the UK and driving up tax rates has the potential of reducing the tax take because people go to the black market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Industry lobbyists have argued that increased taxes would force bookmakers to pass on the cost in the form of worse odds available to gamblers, which would drive them to illegal operators.<\/p>\n

While Entain reported rising underlying profit, it lost \u00a396m before tax overall, due to the impact of one-off costs including amortisation of acquisitions and the cost of legal issues.<\/p>\n

These include alleged non-compliance with money-laundering laws in Australia and a deferred prosecution agreement relating to bribery charges<\/a> involving a business it owned in Turkey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A flurry of bets on the football Club World Cup, England\u2019s triumphant European Women\u2019s Championship campaign and summer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-74562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}