Tab NZ again fell short of its monthly profit budget in November despite surpassing its gross betting revenue (GBR) target for the month.
Tab NZ, New Zealand’s sports betting monopoly, said while major events such as football’s 2022 Fifa World Cup, horse racing’s Melbourne Cup and the NZ Trotting Cup helped it to surpass turnover and GBR levels, gross betting margin and profit missed budget.
Retail traffic continued to hold strong following the easing of Covid-19 restrictions and the overall field size across all three codes was up on the year-to-date average. Other factors such as continued competitive pressure from unregulated offshore operators, reduced betting margin and lower average bet size in key customer segments impacted the figures.
Tab NZ had already warned in early December that due to it missing budgets a number of times in recent months, it would have to reduce distributions to racing codes across New Zealand by 9% for the 2022-23 financial year ending 31 July 2023.
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