By Mark Baber
February 27 – Ladbrokes has revealed it plans to close 60 betting shops as it revealed its pre-tax profits for 2014 fell from £68 million to £38 million, partly due to its biggest ever football loss on record of £8.1 million on Boxing Day as punters celebrated the favourites winning in the major games.
Chelsea, Manchester United, Arsenal and Manchester City all won in the Premier League on Boxing Day resulting in the record loss which chief executive Richard Glynn described as taking “some of the shine off our performance’ in 2014.
The closures come on top of 89 previous shop closures as the firm concentrates its efforts on digital where revenue was up 23% over the year.
Ladbrokes put the blame for the planned closures on increases in taxation, in particular on gaming machines, saying: “The increase in Machine Gaming Duty from March 1 and the anticipated impact of the new UK regulations in 2015 means that further shop closures will be inevitable.
“We continue to optimise the performance of our estate and expect to close a further 60 shops during 2015. We will again try to limit the impact of these closures on our shop teams.’
Ladbrokes also plans to deploy more self-service betting terminals inside its branches – so that each branch will have at least one – revealing that 80% of the betting on the terminals was on football.
Despite the reduced profit figures, group revenues rose 3.8% in the year to £1.2bn, allowing Glynn, who is due to leave once a successor is appointed to give an upbeat assessment, saying”We delivered against all our operational targets, enjoyed a successful World Cup and saw clear growth in key areas of the business.
“The changes put in place have made us competitive and our customers are responding.”
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