Betr profitable and in the market for deals, Matt Tripp says
Matt Tripp, the wealthy bookmaker who launched Betr with News Corporation last year, says he is still interested in buying ASX-listed PointsBet after his wagering business turned its first profit.
In an interview, Mr Tripp said he had “always envisaged it would take somewhere between 20 and 24 months to become consistently profitable” but Betr had now turned a “modest profit” for the past three months.
Matt Tripp at Wentworth Park, where he made his start as a bookmaker. Oscar Colman
“There are six or seven operators now who have expressed interest in selling their business to us,” he said of Betr’s desire to acquire other bookmakers. “We’re engaged with, we’re in diligence with most of those operators.”
“There remains interest in PointsBet. If they have interest in selling, then we’re still there. And we’re still interested. But they’re one of a few, and we’ve got some decisions to make for the first time come the start of this year. For the first time we’ve got genuine profitability and clear air.”
Mr Tripp, the son of a bookmaker who first took bets at the Wentworth Park greyhound racetrack in the 1990s, acquired Sportsbet in 2005 for $250,000 before selling it to Paddy Power, now London-listed Flutter Entertainment, for $388 million six years later. He later acquired BetEzy, which became CrownBet, purchasing William Hill Australia and selling the entire business – eventually known as BetEasy – to The Stars Group in 2019.
Mr Tripp told The Australian Financial Review that he and his team had “completed probably 12 deals in the last 20 years and been responsible for the consolidation, a lot of the market, as we see it today”.
“That’ll be no different over the next couple of years. Our ambition and our intention is to
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