More good Irish online casino news

This week has seen some excellent Irish casino news in the form of the half year results from Paddy Power, Ireland’s biggest and best known online casino and sports betting company. True to form some of the jokey language used in their analysis of their performance over the period may not be what you would expect to find in a company financial statement, but this is Paddy Power. There is no doubt that their highly unusual marketing strategies have certainly increased their brand awareness over recent years and they appear to be going from strength to strength in the online casino and online sports betting market. Net revenues were up an impressive 22% over the first six months and shareholders will have been delighted by a 15% rise in the interim dividend. Equally impressive was the revelation that the amount gambled by individual punters also increased by 15%, although the usual vagaries associated with sporting results meant that this was not totally reflected in the bottom line results. The enormous success of Irish winners at Cheltenham for example hit their Irish betting shops hard, and Patrick Kennedy, Paddy Power’s chief executive also admitted that a few of their marketing promotions had also hit margins with Andy Murray’s victory at Wimbledon a prime example where a money-back offer cost the company £2 million. Nevertheless profits rose by 11% to 77 million euros and a balance sheet containing net cash of 214 million euros puts the company on a very firm footing. Another piece of Irish casino news, again relating to Paddy Power is that they have also been chosen by Facebook to help launch their first sports betting product in the next few weeks in the UK. Apparently this was because they already have 1.7 million Facebook fans and Twitter followers, a further demonstration of the success of their innovative marketing methods.