Around a third of 32Red’s new players used its mobile casino in the first half of 2013, the online casino specialist has revealed.
The mobile channel grew by 157% during in the six months to June 30th to reach 17% of total casino revenues, up from just 8% a year earlier.
While 32Red admitted that some of the growth of its mobile channel was down to migration of its existing customer base, it claimed that the launch of a new HTML5-based mobile offering had provided “a more responsive and stable platform across a wider range of devices and networks” and proved to be an effective method of recruiting new players.
The London-listed casino operator also revealed it had made a strong start to the second half of the financial year which begun in July, with revenues for the first 10 weeks up 27% on the comparable period last year.
Having already reported top-line figures for the half-year in a trading update issued in July, 32Red revealed today that earnings (EBITDA) were up an impressive 39% to £2.5m, with pre-tax profit up 12% to £1.3m, the latter impaired by start-up losses in Italy of £0.6m.
Boss Ed Ware reiterated his statement in July that early trading in Italy, where the casino launched online slots in December, continued to be “slower than expected”. He however added that there had been recent improvement and that he was still confident of the company’s prospects of building a lucrative business in the territory.
The online gaming and betting operator also revealed it continued to look into introducing a “fit for purpose” sports betting platform – currently this is a white-label provided by Betdaq owner Global Betting Exchange – but emphasised its priority remained its flagship online casino, which delivered 17% in revenues to £16.9m, some 91% of the total underlying revenue for the group during the period.
32Red will also funnel the £950,000 compensation payment it received in March from Swansea City FC for early termination of their shirt deal into new player marketing during the second half.
Further funds will be invested into promoting its 32Red Bingo product, with a view to improving its performance and increasing revenues via cross-sell from bingo into casino.
Article written by Peter Holmes
