Over the weekend French gaming company Pari Mutual Urbain (PMU) has released their figures for the first quarter of 2013, figures that are encouraging whilst not ground breaking.
Overall the figures on a year by year basis for the first quarter of 2013 are roughly the same as last year, with a total of €642 million being taken from gaming revenues, a figure that is 1.1% greater than this time last year. Their sports betting increased by a huge 33% on the same period last year to €49.2 million.
President of the PMU group is Philippe Germond and he had the following to say about his company's latest results. He said, “France’s lack of economic growth in the last two quarters of 2012 and during the first quarter of 2013 has had a direct impact on our customers’ spending patterns, since every time there is stagnation or a drop in French people’s purchasing power PMU has felt the after-effects.”
When it comes to the figures for their poker business things are looking extremely promising, with figures for last year showing an increase of 7.5% and a total of €139 million. The figures for their poker business have pleased Mr Germond who said, “These figures mean that PMU is one of the top three or four e-Commerce sites in France and a top iGaming site across all verticals. We have managed to take second position in fixed-odds online sports betting and our poker network is in third position behind two pure players.”
Overall across all platforms PMU showed a total income of €2.5 billion which was up slightly on the previous year, 1.3% up to be precise. An increase is an increase and many other companies in the gaming world right now would be only too pleased to be showing a profit or increase however small that increase may be. At least it gives the powers that be at PMU something to work with for the remainder of the year ahead.
