Poor results at Ladbrokes in the casino news

Ladbrokes casino has been in the general casino news recently but for all the wrong reasons of declining profits and closing shops and even initial talk of reducing the dividend. The blame is being placed at the door of poor football results but reports in the casino news also suggest that the online division which includes the online casino is lagging behind some of its rivals such as William Hill. Ladbrokes casino has been under criticism for some time but more aimed at the other online offerings rather than the online casino which has been fairly recently revamped. Ladbrokes of course took over the online casino software provider Playtech which powers several online casinos so some improvement in the online operations must be expected. Ladbrokes still managed to make a profit of more than £125 million but obviously considers that the cost base is too large and has announced closure of some 60 shops this year. This may of course also be due to the longer term trend towards online casinos and other online gambling and away from the traditional betting shops. New restrictions on the fixed odds betting terminals in UK shops plus the introduction of tax for online casinos in the UK may be contributing to the poor outlook. This new tax for online casinos is called a point if use tax and is applicable only in the UK where any income from UK users of Ladbrokes casino is taxed by the UK authorities. Irish casino users are not affected in any way and of course it is not only Ladbrokes casino which has to comply with these new regulations. Which shops are going to close is not yet known and there may be some in Ireland but interestingly enough the dividend will not be cut at this time.