Launch Date for Revamped Sportium

Ladbrokes, one of the UK’s leading betting companies, has announced a launch date for its Spanish Sportium brand. The revamped site will launch on October 1st, and is a collaboration between Ladbrokes and Spanish operator Cirsa. The Spanish internet casino and sportsbook already runs 600 betting outlets throughout Spain.

As the rest of Europe looks online for future gambling needs, Spain is falling further behind. Spanish poker rooms lost market share again, and were joined by a number of other gambling ventures. With the giant EuroVegas casino project still faltering, the outlook for the gambling market in Spain is not good.

Despite this bleak outlook, Ladbrokes are confident that Sportium will be a success online. As a well trusted offline brand, the company has been working to bring it online for a number of years, and the revamped site is ready to go live now.

Spanish gambling laws are quite lax, meaning that companies can find it easy to enter the market. There has been suggestions that they could be made even laxer – with tax being reduced, too – to help push through the EuroVegas project, but it remains to be seen what new measures will be bought in to help or hinder online gambling.

Meanwhile, Ladbrokes also hopes to launch the Mexican arm of Sportium in 2014, as it pushes for a more worldwide share of the sportsbook market. At the same time, their existing Spanish website – Lbapuestas – is due to close down to open way for Sportium’s launch.

Mobile betting is also taking off throughout Europe, and especially in the UK. Ladbrokes, Paddy Power, and Bet Victor, in particular, have been promoting their mobile services heavily to tap into an increasingly mobile and well off smartphone market. At the same time, the UK is due to introduce a 15% point of consumption tax, a tax that betting companies are vehemently opposed to.