OPAP reveals revenue growth
Greek gambling monopoly OPAP saw sales grow by 5.3% to €358.9m ($603.8m) for the first quarter of 2017, up from €340.7m for the same period of 2016.
The company’s EBITDA stood at €78.5m for the first quarter of 2017, down by 0.4% from the adjusted first quarter 2016 EBITDA of €78.8m.
OPAP attributed this drop to agents’ strikes, development expenses linked with both the VLTs rollout and the implementation of new projects.
The company’s lotteries segment grew by 10.9%, while sports betting grew by 6.9% for the first quarter of the year compared with the same period in 2016.
OPAP’s chief executive, Damian Cope, said: “Despite the challenges of the domestic economic environment, OPAP managed to achieve meaningful Q1 GGR growth, aided by robust lottery games performance and continuing scratch tickets growth.
“At the same time our operating profitability stood marginally higher, despite the additional expenses related to the implementation of our new projects.
“Operationally, we are progressing at full speed with the delivery of our strategic priorities – virtual games have been introduced across our entire retail network with an encouraging early performance, our VLTs rollout is fully under way, our technology transformation programme is picking up pace while the new agents’ commission structure has been effective since April.
“For the rest of 2017 we will continue to build on what has already been accomplished so far this year to ensure that we remain on track to achieve the delivery of our ‘2020 Vision’”
This year OPAP announced it was migrating its entire digital sports betting operation to the new Betgenius sportsbook platform.
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