William Hill withdraws from Ireland

One online casino operator that we do not feature in our list of online casinos here at casinos.ie is William Hill casino but they have been in the general casino news recently for making their final exit from the Irish market of high street bookmakers. This is not strictly casino news but William Hill once had over 50 betting shops in the Republic which they started to close back in 2009 and the news now is that the final 15 shops have been sold to BoyleSports for around €1.5 million which will give Boyle more than 170 shops in total. William Hill is still well represented in the UK where there are more than 2000 shops but operating just 15 here was apparently too difficult and general casino news is of the opinion that they wish to focus more on the online gambling market and in particular the online casino business where the formation of William Hill Online will help. We have reported in the general casino news on previous occasions that William Hill had a joint venture with the online casino software provider Playtech that enabled a greater share of the online casino market to be achieved and also the fact that the British owned bookmaker has made moves into the US market by purchasing American Wagering Inc and the Club Cal Neva Satellite Race and Sports book Division but this latest news does make us wonder where William Hill would like to be in Ireland. Other very well known online casino operators such as Paddy Power and Ladbrokes both have a large presence in the market and run very successful online casino operations and even in the online only market there are operators such as 888 casino and Party Casino who offer everything the online gambler would want..