Views on Betfair's takeover of Blue Square?

Hopefully it goes a way to quenching their thirst for traditional fixed odds trash, and they can focus on BF being an exchange.

Wishful thinking.

I'm no industry expert, but it seems oddly timed. Why didn't Betfair buy them before? They could have just taken on BS's fixed odds product and systems instead of developing their own (or buying it from elsewhere, not sure of the details of what Betfair did)

Yeah I don't get it either. It doesn't make sense to me to run BlueSQ and fixed odds as two separate businesses. Maybe BlueSq has some useful technology that can be used to improve BF fixed odds. As a standalone company it's losing money, and Betfair is unlikely to change that. It's all very confusing to me.

So the only thing I can think of is Betfair will buy BlueSQ for a small sum, take the useful bits for Betfair fixed odds, and close up shop. That's the only strategy I can think of that makes some sense really

"So the only thing I can think of is Betfair will buy BlueSQ for a small sum"

Supposedly upto 35 million, not so small.

Betfair's transformation under new chief executive Breon Corcoran is set to continue if talk about the exchange buying internet gambling firm Blue Square is correct.

Neither side would comment on the rumours at the end of last week but Blue Square's owner Rank had said the bookmaker was "unlikely to continue in its current form" at their latest results announcement.

Rank, who last week announced they had agreed to buy 19 of Gala Coral's 23 UK casinos at a cost of £179 million, paid £65 million for Blue Square ten years ago but are not expected to recoup anything like that amount.

Betfair's new fixed-odds sportsbook produced revenues up 39 per cent to £7.5m in the exchange's third-quarter results issued on Thursday.

The results were met with a largely favourable reaction as Corcoran said the company was on track to meet expectations for the year.

In the three months to January 31 group revenue was down four per cent at £90.5 million, while revenue on the exchange was down six per cent to £56.3m due to regulatory developments in Greece, Germany, Cyprus and Spain.

However Betfair said they were confident that results for the current financial year would be in line with previous guidance with group revenues of between £370m and £385m and group underlying Ebitda of between £65m and £70m.

Corcoran also said that Betfair was on track to meet the £20m in cost savings he announced last year.

I'd guess they want a ready made user-base and staff with some sportsbook experience, can't see too many of the current exchange users using Betfair's sportsbook atm. Been years since I'd used my BlueSQ account and can't remember if they heavily limited accounts or were easy to navigate etc. Either way we can be pretty sure Betfair will **** it all up somehow.

They're probably just paying for the customer base. Now Betfair run a sports book the synergies should be massive.

Push betfair sports book prices onto blue square website
Make 90 pct of blue square staff redundant

The deal might also suggest before are struggling to find sports book customers and have chosen to buy them instead of acquire organically

It makes some sense for BF to buy another sportsbook, but as already said, why go the lengths of developing your own if this was the plan?

Clydebank was on another thread early in the year makig very good points suggesting BlueSq of all the firms had the least identity/least to offer punters ie no shops, no good offers, no niche, no half-time tv ads. So really what is BF getting out of all this?  They have just developed their own software, have a mythical crack trading team and surely don't need any more staff given the number of cuts they are apparently already making?  It can only be as jlivermore says for the customer base.

Maybe it's for the exchange integration? BlueSq are always *very* quick at changing their odds if they happen to be better than what's on Betfair. Perhaps their sportsbook plugs into Betfair better than Betfair's own one?

Can I assume Betfair will take on their antepost liability?

maybe betfair video will show the irish lottery and or 49s

and games ?

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i can hardly wait !