Russian Betting Industry Boomed Thanks to FIFA

Thanks to FIFA being hosted almost next door to Russia, the five major bookmakers in the country managed to double their revenue for 2018 nearly. These figures were released last week by Interfax, a news agency based within Russia. The five largest bookmakers’ numbers indicate extreme growth often both on revenue and profit.

The figures for revenue generated from the sports betting industry were collected from the SPARK-Interfax system. This system is responsible for collecting information from Russian companies. A total in revenue of RUB110 billion ($1.7 billion) was reflected in the bookmarking industry during 2018. This is an 86% improvement on the previous year’s numbers.

Some of the five largest companies performed even better than that. Liga Stavok, which is the largest bookmarker in the Russian market, nearly tripled their figures from the previous year. They generated a total of RUB36.1 billion in revenue. Even more impressive is the fact that their profit showed an even more significant improvement of 30 times the previously released numbers. This is now standing on RUB620.1 million. This impressive increase is, however, not only due to FIFA but also to other market changes as well as corporate restructuring.

Second, in line of greatest achievements is Fonbet. Fonbet managed to generate RUB24.1 billion, which is an increase of two and a half times the 2017 number. Their profit showed even more significant growth as well and stood on RUB 9.3 billion. Compared to the previous year, this indicates an increase of 5.5 times. Bingo Boom came in third and interestingly, although their revenue increased to RUB20.2 billion, their profits took a plummet of two-fifths to the amount of RUB380.6 million.

Betcity is the country’s fourth-best achiever. They had a decrease in revenue but made an excellent recovery on profit. Their income dropped with 4.2% to RUB17.3 billion, while their profit increased to RUB458.5 million. This is nine and a half times what they managed the previous year. The number five on the list is Baltbet. Even though their revenue decreased with 12.5% to RUB12.2 billion, their net profit stood on RUB252 million. This is an excellent comeback for them because, during 2017, they made a loss of RUB78.3 billion.

Murky Waters Ahead

Despite the brilliant performance during 2018, the future for Russian bookmakers seems to be slightly murkier. This is because the Russian government is pushing legislation, which is not at all favourable towards Visa and MasterCard. The bill is driven in response to United States sanctions against individual Russian banks. Currently, is it expected that both companies would start to limit their activity within the country to avoid punishment from the US government for violating the sanction regulations? This will affect bookmakers because even if opening an account is easy, it might become more and more challenging to get paid without these two service providers. The actual effect of the legislation and sanctions will have to be seen still though.