Leisure Spread's online betting operation shows losses of €32,852

LEISURE SPREAD, the online betting company backed by former Smurfit Stone boss Ray Curran and footballer Kevin Moran, recorded a loss of €32,852 last year.

Recently filed accounts for the company which operates a sports and share betting website as well as an online casino, show that losses narrowed from over €635,000 the previous year. The company trades under the SportSpread and ShareSpread brands.

The company would have made a profit were it not for the Government betting duty which it absorbed at its own cost.

Fixed odds betting turnover at the company, which was set in 2001, rocketed from €300,161 to €7.7 million in the year to end March 2003, according to the accounts just filed at the Companies Registration Office.

The spread betting side of the business had total turnover of €50 million during the year and this is expected to rise to almost €80 million this year.

At operating level the company recorded a loss of just 23,259, but decided to pay the Government €187,826 in betting tax rather than pass it on to consumers. This pushed out the retained loss at year end to €1.4 million.

The directors said in the accounts that they were pleased with the performance and expected the company to trade profitably this year.

The accounts show that it has spent heavily on building up its business with cash balances falling from €1 million at the beginning of the year to €146,084 while the wages and salary bill nearly doubled to €419,850.

The company employs around 20 people in Dublin. Last May the SportSpread raised €3 million in funding from a number of private individuals, valuing the business at around €11m.

The company was set up by Conor Foley, a former stockbroker, and is chaired by his father, Michael.

Also on the board are Ray Curran, who was chief executive of Smurfit Stone Container Corporation and now chairs the financial firm Merrion Capital. Lindsay McNeile the founder of the Sporting Index Group, the largest sports spread betting company in Britain, is on the board as is Kevin Moran, the former Irish soccer international.