The Irish Greyhound sector received another major boost today as it
continues to forge ahead with international betting on it's world leading
racing product with the completion of deals that link the industry further
into the European market and into the Asian market for the first time
through Datatote and IBC.
The deal is a revenue sharing deal with the
potential to be worth close to €100k a year to the IGB and it is envisaged
that this will grow over the next few years. Both companies are large agents
for sports and racing in Europe and Asia with Datatote having clients in
many countries including UK, Germany,Czech Republic, Pakistan, and IBC being
the number one bookmaker in Asia.
The deal will expose the Irish greyhound sport to a world wide audience and
also ensures a mechanism by which those same people will bet into Irish
greyhound racing pools which we will bring in increased revenues to the
industry and the sport benefitting thousands of Irish owners and trainers.
The arrangement will take Irish Greyhound racing across Asia on at least
fifteen websites with bets going directly into track pools.
Adrian Neilan IGB CEO said "This is a great opportunity for Greyhound racing as the Asian
market is growing fast and Greyhound Racing will fit very well into the
existing sports betting profile. The IBC deal is particularly exciting and
has taken some time to develop but we are very hopeful that we can generate
lots of new greyhound fans in Asia. We will be watching very closely to see
how we can help Market our great sport in this new market. These new
revenues will be a great boost for us from a bottom line perspective and we
hope to build on that each year into the foreseeable future".
"We are heartened to also see our Quarter operating performance bucking the
economic trend and performing ahead of expectations. Encouragingly we are up
3% on overall attendance around our venues countrywide whilst our Tote take
is up 2%"' he continued.
The popularity of the sport has also seen more high end corporate sponsors
coming onboard and sponsoring some of the high profile competitions in the
IGB racetracks and this support in addition to other prizemoney investments
by IGB had led to a 10% increase in prizemoney grants over Q1 levels".