Top UK bookmaking firm William Hill has announced its interim results for the first half of 2007. While profits are up £1.2 million to £161.2 million, the company's interactive channel, which covers its poker product, saw a decline in both revenue and profit.
'Poker and casino have also had a difficult trading period,' the company said. 'Casino has suffered from a reduction in high roller activity and by a cannibalisation of revenue to arcade games. Poker has had a difficult period but the introduction of a closed loop (which means that poker winnings should be recycled amongst our clients within the Cryptologic poker room) and lower limit tables has seen an average 10 percent increase in rake taken in the last few weeks of the period.
'Interactive gross win fell by £8.7m to £62.0m and operating profit fell by £7.8 million to £28.1m. Although these results are disappointing, they demonstrate a stabilisation of the decline experienced in the second half of last year, with
gross win showing an increase of 4 percent when compared to that period.'
William Hill is perhaps best know in the poker world for its 2006 Sky TV production the William Hill Grand Prix. Phil Laak took the £150,000 frist prize after beating Hendon Mobster Ram Vaswani head up.
