UK Bookmakers at Risk from Online Operators

The first decade of the new millennium is behind us and it is a good time to assess what the internet revolution did to high street retailers and other high street businesses such as betting shops.

The days of strolling down the high street or venturing to your local shopping mall in order to buy a book, a new music album or to make a bet on your favorite football team, seem to be numbered.

Many of the biggest retailing businesses in the UK have seen their customers flocking to the internet to purchase music, books and electronic gear as the internet offers to modern busy people a new shopping experience which is easy, safe and considerably cheaper than the prices charged in high street shops.

It was only a matter of time before the same thing happened to high street bookmakers and brought another well-established high street industry to its knees.

The big high street bookmakers such as William Hill and Ladbrokes have long since realized that the internet allows them a greater market penetration and exposes them to a new generation of sports gamblers that are internet savvy and don't really venture outside for their retail needs.

William Hill has created an exceptionally reliable and sturdy sports betting online platform that allows pre-game and in-play wagering to punters from the UK and all over the world. Ladbrokes has done the same.

The fears for the future are not concerning the big bookmakers but rather the medium and smaller bookmakers who are at risk of not having the capital to invest in replicating their high street business into a successful internet business.

One such business is Gala Coral, with its 1,600 betting shops throughout the UK, which last year had to do some serious debt restructuring of its £700 million in losses and was required to borrow £175 million from lenders to be able to do so.