Phone gamblers top punters

PHONE punters are leaving their betting shop counterparts in the also-ran place in the gambling stakes, placing wagers seven times greater than the cloth cap brigade.

Dolmen Securities’ latest research note on bookmakers Paddy Power rate the year-old public company a buy with a potential upside of 23% on the share price, which has served investors well in its first full year since flotation last December.

Dolmen analyst Pat Duggan goes through the betting habits of the three main types of customer who gamble with Paddy Power.

In terms of wager size, the man on the “blower” is the top punter, gambling an average of 101.15 per bet compared to just 14.44 for the man in the betting shop and 22.50 risked per bet by the internet.

And it seems what Mr Duggan describes as the “experienced nature of the punter using the service’ means phone betting is the least profitable for Powers, returning a gross margin of just 8.3% despite having the lowest-overheads.

The mugs appear to be betting shop punters where, despite having the highest overheads, generate the largest gross profits of between 13%-14%. The loss-making paddypower.com makes a gross return 8%, but here a different type of punter is a work.

“The site has been extremely successful for Paddy Power in terms of both brand awareness and increasingly active customers.

“With an interim turnover contribution of €41m, which represents 13% of turnover, the operation currently has 33,988 active users with 96,796 registrations. 59% of this turnover is sterling originated bets with the remaining 31% in euro”.