The Malta-based Gambling.com Group, a major gambling entity, has made a significant move this week towards the sports betting market with the purchase of website Bookies.com, which for the time being will act as a placeholder for its ambitions in that sector. The huge purchase, which reportedly included a cash settlement of £2 million along with a year-long deferred payment of a further £4.5 million, secured a portfolio of 76 sports betting and casino-related domain names, including Bookmakers.co.uk and Footballscores.com. Bookies.com itself has largely focused on horse racing and football action thus far.
This big move indicates a willingness – indeed, a clear intention – by the Gambling.com Group to expand into the sports betting vertical, and is also illustrative of a recent tendency in the gambling sector as a whole to move towards mixed portfolios of gaming assets. Sport is clearly also both growing and diversifying rapidly, with new regulated markets developing in key locations. This, of course, accompanies the growing buzz in the American gaming sector over the pending Supreme Court decision on the Christie vs NCAA case, which could lay the road to regulation there in the near future.
Gambling.com Group CEO Charles Gillespie actually spoke specifically to this issue in a recent address: “Should (former) Governor Chris Christie triumph at the Supreme Court and strike down the federal ban on sports-betting, Gambling.com Group stands ready with the strongest domain portfolio of any performance marketing company for the American sports betting market.”
This is not the only moving and shaking which Gambling.com has got up to recently. It also acquired Mobile Performance Marketing Network in January of this year for £3 million down and up to £4.5 million in earn-out over the first year of operations, dependent on performance. Having increased its number of non-executive directors recently with the appointments of Susan Ball, previously at Unibet, and Par Sundberg, formerly of Sweden’s OTW, this acquisition may also have played a role in Gambling.com Group’s recent expansion of vested interests.
Gillespie went on to enthuse about the deal, “This is the largest and most exciting acquisition we have done since we began acquiring in 2017. These websites perfectly complement our existing portfolio in terms of both increasing our sports betting market share and continuing with our focus on big brands and big domains.”
