The board of directors and the supervisory board had passed a restructuring plan to reduce costs, it said in a press release yesterday.
As reported, the company is no longer allowed to operate its online casino in Austria. The EU freedom to provide services brought up by bet-at-home failed at the highest court because of the domestic gaming monopoly.
The domestic legislator is currently working on an amendment to the gaming law, which should come this year, but is still not ready. The Greens are more in favor of tightening it. It is quite unlikely that providers other than Casinos Austria will also be considered as licensees for online casinos in the future.
“The signals from politics are clear,” says a company spokesman. It is more in the direction of using so-called “geo-blocking” to deprive companies from abroad of the opportunity to offer their services to domestic players. The online betting business remains for bet-at-home.
In the first half of the year, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (Ebitda) fell by around two thirds to 5.4 million euros. The reason was marketing expenses for the European Football Championship and falling results in the online gaming segment in Germany.
The group has scaled back its forecasts, and a negative result is expected for the year as a whole, also because high provisions had to be made for player lawsuits. (hn)
Source: Nachrichten
