Bwin Gains Ticket To Real Madrid In-Stadium Betting
The Bwin/Betbull joint venture ‘W1nners’ is to offer retail football betting from within Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu stadium starting later this month.
The Bwin/Betbull joint venture ‘W1nners’ is to offer retail football betting from within Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu stadium starting later this month.
In-running and fixed-odds football betting will be offered from four points of sale in directors’ boxes at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium, Betbull Bwin España said. The agreement means the Bernabeu will become the first football arena in Spain to offer in-stadium sports betting once the four ‘W1nners’ outlets open for business beginning with Real Madrid’s home fixture against Valladolid on Sunday April 12.
The in-stadium betting will initially run as a pilot scheme for the remainder of the 2008/09 Spanish football season, a Bwin spokesman said, but further terminals could be installed throughout the Bernabeu next season should the scheme prove successful.
Betbull/Bwin obtained a sports betting licence from the autonomous government in the Madrid region in October 2008. The venture opened its first ‘W1nners’ betting outlet in a Madrid shopping centre in February of this year, but has now expanded into the Santiago Bernabeu on the back of part-owner Bwin’s lucrative shirt sponsorship deal with Real Madrid. The companies plan to eventually open up to 120 betting outlets under the W1nners brand.
Bwin has also applied for a separate online gaming licence from the Madrid authorities to cover its flagship bwin.com web offering. The bwin.com domain name is currently emblazoned on the Real Madrid players’ shirts and on advertising hoardings inside the Bernabeu as per the three-year sponsorship deal Bwin signed with the Madrid club in 2007.
Bwin’s partner Betbull has recently trimmed its operations to focus solely on the ‘W1nners’ venture in Madrid and on its German-facing business. Financial results released yesterday showed the discontinuance of Betbull’s operations in Spain’s Andalucia region incurring a loss of €1.9m for the firm last year, while the company also confirmed that it has disposed of its Italian betting shop business.
Andalucia and the start-up costs associated with ‘W1nners’ contributed to Betbull’s full-year loss widening to €4.3m for 2008 from €1.9m the year previously. Annual EBITDA including the Madrid operations dropped to -€2.8m, compared with a negative of €500k in 2007.
Despite the losses, however, the company said it saw total wagering turnover rise 28.5 percent year-on-year to €100.4m, with net gaming revenue also up 21 percent to €13.3m. The company said the performance could be attributed primarily to “an excellent result from the German operations, where the group has managed to achieve steady growth and stable trading results despite the unfavorable legislative environment.”
Betbull director Simon Bold stated that he believed the firm’s investment in Madrid would provide “significant contributions to group profits in the future.” He added: “We are pleased with the development of the fully licensed market and actively await the opportunity to apply for licences in further [Spanish] regions as and when available.”
The announcement regarding the Bernabeu betting outlets comes hard on the heels of Real’s local rivals Atlético de Madrid announcement of its own entry into the gambling arena. Atlético last month announced the launch of a specialist betting and gaming website to be operated under a white label deal with Finnish-based remote gambling firm Paf. A club spokesman told GamblingCompliance that there had no plans to expand the offering to include retail betting from within Atlético’s Vicente Calderón stadium however.