Ladbrokes Australia Has Just Acquired Local Sports Betting Website

Added: October 25, 2013

Ladbrokes has really been ramping up its investment in to the Australian online gambling market in recent months. It has made several strategic acquisitions, the latest of which is the well-established and profitable sports betting website bookmaker.com.au.

Let’s just take a look at how much Ladbrokes has invested into online gambling and online casino sites in Australia recently, as it is really quite a startling amount of money. Ladbrokes started hunting for online casino operators and other online gambling companies in Australia at the start of the year, and in March, it purchased Sportingbet, for the princely sum of $660 million, a very expensive acquisition indeed. Next, in August, Ladbrokes purchased one of the top sports book sites in Australia, Tom Waterhouse, for $40 million. Then just a few short weeks later Ladbrokes finalized its purchase of Gaming Investments, an Australian based online gambling company for $22.5 million. We do not yet know how much Ladbrokes will be paying for the Australian sports book site bookmaker.co.au, but we could well see the overall investment that Ladbrokes has made into the Australian online gambling market nudge over the $1 billion mark with this latest acquisition. Incredible, and a good indication of just how profitable a good online casino or online gambling site can be in Australia.

The interesting thing here, is that Ladbrokes is a very compatible online gambling company, when it comes to Australian punters. Ladbrokes started out as a high street bookmaker in the UK. It was one of the first bookmaker firms to open an online casino, and has operated an online sports book for more than a decade. What makes it interesting is that the general approach to gambling in Australia, is very similar to that in the UK. Primarily sports book and bookmaker orientated, but now with an every growing online casino market.

So what we are seeing, is a truly international online gambling company, with a massive amount of funding and resources behind it, making a bold play to capture a massive chunk of the emerging Australian online gambling market. Is this a good or bad thing? Well, it could be both. On one hand, Ladbrokes is a reputable company, that operates a slick operation, what more could Australian online gamblers want from an online casino site? On the other hand, monopolization is generally a bad thing, and it would not be healthy for the market for Ladbrokes to capture a far larger slice of the pie than other online gambling companies.