Liverpool sports betting firm Stanleybet sees annual increase in bets placed to £736m and returns to profit after ‘player friendly’ Premier League results led to heavy losses in the previous year. Tony McDonough reports

Liverpool sports betting firm Stanleybet has returned to profits after taking a hit from lucky punters in the previous years.

Stanleybet, which is based at The Plaza in St Paul’s Square has posted its annual accounts for the 12 months to December 31, 2024, on Companies House. The business reports in euros and LBN has converted all figures to sterling.

They show an 8.3% in annual revenues to £75.8m. In the previous year a series of “player friendly” Premier League results had resulted in pre-tax losses of £11m for the company. However, results returned to normal levels in the period covered by these latest accounts with the business reporting pre-tax profits of around £409,000.

From its Liverpool headquarters Stanleybet operates more than 2,000 betting shops. It has a very limited presence in the UK with almost all outlets in countries such as Italy, Romania, Germany, Belgium, Croatia and Poland. It has pulled out of Cyprus and Spain.

Previous incarnations of the Stanley business were much more active in the UK. It sold around 700 UK betting shops to William Hill in 2005 and also once operated a network of regional casinos.

Over the past couple of years Stanleybet has reduced its headcount from around 270 to less than 200. Majority shareholder Giovanni Garrisi  also injected £1.22m into the business in the form of a loan.

Writing in the annual report, Giovanni said: “Margins in the prior year were negatively impacted by a sustained period of player friendly sports results and online promotional activity. Margins return to more normalised levels in the 2024 financial year.

“Administration costs decreased by 20% as a result of business restructuring and cost-cutting initiatives and the group report is an operating profit.”

Unlike the UK’s liberalised betting market, gaming laws in many European countries are much stricter and Stanleybet has frequently ended up in court either disputing tax bills or trying to establish its legitimate right to operate.

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This has been particularly true in Italy where the company has been battling the authorities in the courts for many years at significant financial cost.

Giovanni explained: “Multiple levels of court hierarchy in each country result in decisions taking a number of years to conclude. The group and its Italian intermediaries have been involved, and are still involved, in several cases at varying levels of the Italian national courts.”