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Seeing Green in Greece

The online caisno gambling market in Europe has done pretty well this year, with internet gambling companies are reporting decent profits and gamblers are still heading to the land and internet gaming venues. For the gambling monopolies there are definitely positive results coming in because of the fact that these companies have very little (in fact almost zero) competition. OPAP, the Greek gambling monopoly has released the full year profits for the 2008 financial year and they are pretty positive on the whole. The year brought only a few of the difficulties that faced much of the rest of the world – online casinos and internet gambling sites saw very few dips in profit throughout the year.

Greece is one of the several gambling markets that is under the scrutiny of the European Commission for its state gambling market that blocks foreign online casinos from competing. As for the profits for the 2008 year, OPAP’s report indicated that the profits rose a very respectable 19.6 percent. Company revenues were also up last year showing a 9 percent increase and coming in at Euro 5.5 billion. OPAP is not the only land and online casino gambling company in Europe to report doing well in the market, the gambling venues have continued to find that gamblers are willing to spend their hard-earned dollars on bets and gambles. In the current globally recessive economy, it was a bit of a surprise to many of the companies that they continued to find themselves so profitable.

The OPAP report also contained some predictions for the coming year. The 2009 financial year has gotten off to a solid start for many land and online casino gambling companies. The CEO and Chairman, Christos Hadjiemmanuil, commented, “for 2009, despite the deteriorating economic conditions, we will focus on maintaining our strong profitability at high levels and support initiatives to expand outside our core concession.” OPAP may be looking at profitability for the coming year, but there are also a slew of problems and issues facing the company in the coming months and years if it continues to avoid a confrontation with the European Commission about banning foreign online casinos and land betting companies – this situation will eventually have an effect on the company’s bottom-line.