Added: March 23, 2014
Betfair should need no introduction. Betfair is one of the oldest, most well established sports book operators, and has been offering sports betting services online for over a decade. More recently, Betfair has also added a traditional online casino site to its online gambling operations, alongside its existing sports book services. So now online gamblers can enjoy online casino games, as well as online sports betting in a single online casino site.
p>We have just heard that it is highly likely that Betfair will soon be selling its entire online gambling setup in Australia, this includes the online sports book, and the online casino games, to Crown.To be completely accurate, Crown Resorts, which already holds a 50% shareholding in the Australian arm of Betfair, will be taking up the entire 100% of share allocation, basically taking ownership of all Betfair operations in Australia when they do so.
Betfair originally entered in to this partnership with Crown when it set up its Australian operation. It is now said that Betfair is very keen to offload its half of the business to Crown, as the Australian sports betting and online casino activities have been far less profitable that Betfair originally expected them to be.
James Packer, the infamous Chairman of Crown, is said to be very keen to get this deal signed and take full ownership of all Betfair operations in Australia. However, there has as yet, been no official statement made about this possible buyout by either Betfair, or Crown, so we are working almost totally on rumor here. However, as they say, there is no smoke without fire, and we are sure this deal is deep in negotiation at the moment. As we all know, James Packer is well-known as a mad who likes these kinds of deals. So we fully expect to see an official statement from Betfair and Crown very soon, as we are sure there is a lot going on behind the scenes that we have not heard about yet.
So how will this affect those people in Australia who are currently using either the Betfair sports betting service online, or playing at the Betfair online casino? The simple truth is that we have no idea. Will Crown completely rebrand and change the online gambling site, or will they retain the Betfair brand image and change very little? We just hope that the site stays open and offering the same great service.
