The growth of the French betting operator Pari Mutuel Urbain (PMU) continues despite stagnation in the domestic horseracing sector.
The French betting operator Paris Mutuel Urbain (PMU) is in line to achieve it’s 16th straight year of growth after the release of its Q1 financial reports showed an 0.8% growth in overall activity totalling €2.678 billion. The news will delight PMU Chief Executive Philippe Germond who saw turnover rise by 2.5% to €10.5 billion in the 2012 fiscal year.
PMU’s biggest market is of course it’s national horse racing business, but this area remained stagnant at €2,490 billion, but PMU were quick to point out that this was despite numerous cancellations due to adverse weather conditions. Elsewhere, the international horseracing sector saw profits skyrocket 126% to take it to 5% of its total horse racing business.
Emil Petit is a sponsored PMU Team Poker Pro and was a member of the CalvinAyre ‘Sports Betting Diaries’ a few weeks ago. An avid sports betting fan, the former French tennis number one junior, told CalvinAyre that betting on sports was getting tougher in France because: “All the best sites are banned in France e.g. Betfair, English Bookmakers, Asian Bookmakers, so I don’t bet too much now, mostly because of the laws. The odds that you get in France are sh*t making it almost impossible to bet on sports and win.”
Maybe the lack of French sports betting options is one of the reasons that the sports betting arm of PMU saw an increase of 33% in the first quarter?
Petit is one of six PMU sponsored team pros that head their poker division. The team of Rebecca Gerin, Philippe Ktorza, Guillaume Darcourt, Emil Petit and the former Olympic soccer gold medalist Jean-Philippe Rohr are joined by their only online team pro Clement Beauvois charged with taking the PMU brand around the world.
They are not doing a bad job either with Beauvois making the final table of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Mazagan where he finished in fifth place, Philippe Ktorza finishing as runner-up to Marvin Rettenmaier at the WPT Season X Championship finale at The Bellagio and Guillaume Darcourt just taking down the WPT National Series event in Cannes for €87,500 and a seat into the Season XII WPT Grand Prix de Paris. PMU’s online poker division saw a 7.5% increase during Q1.
Germond is in no mood to rest on his laurels. His ‘PMU 2020’ strategy aims to push PMU’s interests in the international markets that are becoming so profitable for them, whilst also sniffing around the social and digital platforms that are interesting every other man and his dog in the gambling world. The lofty goal of €1 billion in net income by 2020 is the crux of the strategic plan.
