German gambling operator mybet Holdings SE will close their online poker room on June 30. The iPoker skin has not made the cut as mybet prepares to launch a new platform.
Another online poker room bites the dust as the German gaming outfit mybet Holding SE issued a press release stating their online poker room would be closing for business.
The iPoker skin plans to shut the cyber doors on June 30. Mybet players have received correspondence explaining that their account balances will be shifted to an online casino/sportsbetting wallet. They have until July 15 to transfer player points into cash.
The reason for the sale is as sensible as it is logical. It doesn’t earn enough revenue to justify the cost of operations. Mybet CEO, Zeno Osskó, told the press that in 2015, the online poker room was responsible for €1m of the €63m annual total revenue earned by the company, an amount he called a ‘minor share’ that ‘delivered virtually no contribution’ to the bottom line.
The move comes as mybet prepares to launch their new look casino and sportsbook. The new platform will hit the Internet once Iceland has won the Euro 2016 Championships in France. The changes placed every revenue earner under the microscope, and online poker’s beating heart looked like an atom.
Q1 revenue for the German gambling operator was €14.9m, down 11% year-on-year. Revenue from sports betting was the biggest culprit falling to €8.2m (a 10.6% drop year-on-year). Poker and casino earned €4.3m (a 20.9% increase year-on-year).
€2.3m of overall revenue came from betting on the horses. A fortnight ago the Germans announced reluctant plans to sell their stake in the Pferdewetten.de gee-gee business for €9.9m as they tried desperately to free up some additional cash in the wake of the prolonged decision from the Maltese regulators to approve mybet’s sale of their B2B payments subsidiary C4U-Malta Ltd.
Mybet Holding SE has its HQ in Kiel, Germany. They operate both in the online world and brick and mortar equivalent. At the time of writing they have a total of 1,533,222 registered gambling customers.
