William Hill’s plan for world sports betting domination over?

It is just over a year since UK bookmakers William Hill and the Spanish owned gambling and sports betting company Codere joined forces to open their first outlet. The Victoria Apuestas opened in Madrid in April 2008 and since that time has gone on to extend their coverage to 98 locations. However William Hill are not seeing the return on investment that was originally forecast and in fact there was a view that further capital investment would be required, therefore William Hill have taken the decision to make a gradual withdrawal from the venture.

On the surface the joining together of two large European gaming names should give the sweet smell of success, Codere has traded since 2007 and has a turnover in the region of €915 million and William Hill is one of the UK’s biggest names in UK betting with in the region of 2,300 high street betting shops, 1.1 million account holders and in 2007 the gross turnover was €1,374 million. William Hill’s official press release states the reason for the failure to achieve the ‘relevant scale’ is due to the slowness of obtaining regulatory consents, a slowness of anticipated changes to regulations in certain regions and a very difficult economic climate in Spain.

Of course this isn’t the first time that William Hill has needed to walk away from a joint European venture with Codere. The Italian joint venture agreement which was established in 2007 with Codere Italia resulted in William Hill selling their stake for similar reasons to Intralot International Holdings Ltd in July 2008.

William Hill has said in their press release that they are going to focus their energies on William Hill Online, and although this does incorporate International sports betting it is only internet based. William Hill has also stated that Codere will now manage Victoria Apuestas and that they will continue to provide bookmaking services to Codere.