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Paddy Power buys Sportsbet Australia

This has been in the pipeline for a while but I was asked to keep quiet on it to protect my source.

Paddy Power take control of Sportsbet

Ireland's leading bookmaking firm Paddy Power, mooted to be a bidder for TAB licenses in Australia, has purchased a 51 per cent stake in Northern Territory-based Sportsbet.

Racing Post reported that Paddy Power had paid an initial €27.2 million for the majority stake in the company established by the Tripp family.


The tricky part here is that Sportsbet own nearly 20% of IAS, who are up for sale as well. It's all go in the Australian betting market at the moment.

Sportsbet, based in Darwin, was the original sports bookmaker in Australia. It was founded in the late 80s by Bryan Clark who sold the business a decade later. It has since changed hands a couple of times before the Tripp group purchased it and improved it significantly. And now they've been able to cash in on their hard work.

Paddy Power buys Sportsbet stake, shares rise

It sounds like a wise strategic move for them - the UK and Ireland is a very competitive market, tax in Ireland has just gone up and the Australian market has just been deregulated.

Here's the presentation that Paddy Power has passed onto shareholders. There's one serious flaw in it - the awareness of the name. Australia has TAB Sportsbet (the monopoly sports operator in most states) and there is Sportsbet (often listed as Sportsbet NT or Sportsbet Australia). Ask those same people who said the awareness was 78% to differentiate between the two and it would fall flat on its face!

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