Ladbrokes Coral Set For £4Billion Takeover

GVC Holdings have put forward a proposed takeover of popular bookmaker Labrokes Coral in a deal that could be worth up to £4billion if the purchase goes through. This could be big news for us as matched bettors, as if the takeover happens it may affect the offers that are listed on both the Ladbrokes and Coral websites. If you are unfamiliar with matched betting, it is a way of making an expected profit from bookmaker offers and promotions, using a betting exchange such as the Matchbook website.

We will go into more detail about matched betting later on in the article, but let’s take a look at the details of the proposed deal for Ladbrokes Coral. GVC currently have a couple of gambling brands under their umbrella, including bwin, Sportingbet, partypoker and Foxy Bingo and are looking to add two huge bookmaker names to that list. If the deal was to go through, GVC would own 53.5% of the company.

This may be delayed though, as the price cannot be finalised until the government’s review into Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) takes place. This review could have a massive effect, as the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has said that a cap on the stake sizes available on the gaming machines needs to be put into place, with a cut from the current £100 maximum to between £2 and £50 being rumoured.

GVC will be looking to use the Ladbrokes and Coral brands in order to create a large international online and retail sports betting and gaming group. Kenneth Alexander is the CEO of GVC and he would be the man in charge of the group if the deal does go through. He had this to say about the potential partnership:

“The creation of one of the world’s largest listed sports betting companies, combining a portfolio of established brands, proven technology and leading market positions in multiple geographies, is a truly exciting prospect.

“In a dynamically evolving industry, the transaction creates an Enlarged Group with the scale, diversity, proprietary technology and management expertise to pursue many opportunities globally.

“GVC has a proven track record of creating shareholder value through the successful integration of acquired businesses and the GVC Board believe this transaction will create further value for our shareholders and those of Ladbrokes Coral.”

The share amounts are interesting too. For each share owned by Ladbrokes Coral shareholders, they are set to receive 32.7p in cash and 0.141 ordinary GVC shares, in addition to a contingent value right which could be worth up to 42.8p. John Kelly, the current Chairman of Ladbrokes Coral has had this to say:

“In its relatively short time as a merged entity, Ladbrokes Coral has demonstrated why scale can be so effective in this market.

“Notwithstanding that, the Ladbrokes Coral Board believes that the proposed combination with GVC accelerates our strategy to improve the customer experience, drive faster online growth and build a more diverse and extensive international portfolio of businesses.

“The Acquisition has compelling strategic rationale allied to an opportunity to use the best of both from proven management teams and will create material shareholder value. It secures earlier delivery of our long-term value potential, which is why the Board of Ladbrokes Coral has unanimously recommended GVC’s offer.”

The current GVC offer values Ladbrokes Coral at 160.9p per share, which comes to approximately £3.2billion, and with contingency fees of up to 42.8p per share, the final price could in fact rise to almost £4billion.

Matched Betting With Ladbrokes Coral

As mentioned, Ladbrokes Coral can also be helpful to us as matched bettors, thanks to the offers and promotions that they list. If you have not come across matched betting before, it is a way of turning bookmaker offers into an expected profit. To do this, we can use special matched betting tools such as our matched betting calculator, Odds Matcher and bet tracker.

Here are some of the offers that you could profit from on the Ladbrokes and Coral websites.

Ladbrokes

New Customer Offer

Ladbrokes will give you a £50 free bet to use when you enter a special promo code and then deposit and bet £50 of your own money. To complete this offer, we will back a selection to win with Ladbrokes and lay against it winning at a betting exchange such as the Matchbook website in order to cover both outcomes. By keeping the qualifying loss to a minimum, we can qualify for the free bet, then we can use the free bet stake to guarantee a profit through the same back and lay strategy. This offer is worth around £35 in expected profit when it is complete.

Odds Boost

The Odds Boost offer has been going for a number of months now. It can be a very useful little offer that can be used to essentially ‘arb’ a profit. An arb is simply a selection that has bigger odds at the bookmaker than at the exchange, allowing us to make an expected profit. By using our Odds Matcher to find a close match between the bookmaker and exchange odds you will be able to maximise your expected profit. With this offer, you can get one Odds Boost a day and it could be worth around £2 each time.

Coral

New Customer Offer

With Coral’s welcome offer, you could make an expected profit of around £16. The offer is a simple bet £5, get £20 in free bets. In order to complete this offer, sign up for an account and place your first bet worth £5, using our Odds Matcher to automatically find the best possible match. This is important as it minimises qualifying losses, which can maximise your eventual expected profit amount. £20 worth of free bets will then be credited to your account immediately in the form of four £5 free bets. You can still place them all on one bet, but you need to place them separately. Use the back and lay strategy again, using the free bet stakes this time.

Free Bet Club

As a standard customer, betting £25 or more each week between Monday and Thursday at odds of Evens (2.0) or greater will get you one £5 free bet. You can get a bonus as with a Connect Card, you can get two £5 Coral free bets with no additional effort required. One free bet will be for use online and the other for use in-store. This effectively doubles the value of the offer when matched betting, so it could be worth £7 in expected profit overall. 

If you’re new to matched betting and fancy giving it a try, then you should take up our 14-day trial for just £1. It includes instructions of how to make money online from three signup offers and you’ll have access to over £1,000 worth of bookmaker free bets and bonuses.