Greek gaming operator and lottery tech supplier Intralot saw group revenues rise 14.3% to €1.374b in 2012 thanks to a year filled with expansion moves. Earnings rose 15.4% to €177.5m, aided by what Intralot Group CEO Constantinos Antonopoulos referred to as “robust” 45% earnings growth in the fourth quarter as a spate of deals Intralot inked this year began contributing to the bottom line.
In case you pulled a Rip Van Winkle in 2012, Intralot entered the German sports betting market via a joint venture with Scientific Games, secured a 10-year concession to operate video lottery terminals (VLT) and amusement with prizes (AWP) machines in Italy, was part of the consortium awarded the 12-year concession to operate Greece’s Hellenic Lotteries, won VLT monitoring contracts in Ohio and Australia and a 10-year contract to run the Taiwan Sports Lottery.
Intralot’s hot streak has continued into 2013, with the company having launched virtual sports betting products in Italy, received a betting license in Cyprus, launched US-facing free-play online site DeepstackCasino.net and received an extension of its lottery deal in South Carolina. This week, Intralot announced that its Peruvian subsidiary Intralot de Peru had launched an online lottery and sports betting platform for mobile devices. Earlier this month, Intralot was one of six companies certified by the China Sports Lottery Administration (CSLA) as an approved terminal supplier, positioning the company to offer its Photon terminals to the 31 provincial CSLA lottery outfits preparing to update/replace their existing machines.
Things haven’t always gone as smoothly in Intralot’s home market. While Intralot was selected as one of the seven companies short-listed for bidding on the Greek government’s 33% stake in betting monopoly OPAP, the renewal of Intralot’s €108.8m IT contract with OPAP has been shelved following complaints by two other OPAP stake bidders who insisted that the deal contravened European Union law. The agency overseeing the Greek asset fire sale now intends to discuss what to do with the contract at an OPAP general meeting on April 6.
