Perform moves away from football rights renewal
Company will not renew rights agreement with Italian Serie A or French Ligue 1 from start of new season - costs saved redeployed to fund other rights acquisitions.
Perform Group, that commercialises multimedia sports content across online platforms including on a number of large sports betting sites, will not renew its rights agreement with the Italian Serie A or French Ligue 1 from the start of the 2012/13 season.
The costs saved will be redeployed to fund other rights acquisitions, it said in a statement last night however it added it is on track to deliver revenue and EBITDA in line with the board’s expectations.
The company has been one of the best performing gaming-related shares on the London stock exchange since it floated in mid-April last year seeing its share price rise by more than 80% since listing. The last two days trading, however have seen an expected dip in share price falling 17% from 405p to this morning’s 337p. At the time of writing the stock is down by more than 7% since the market opened this morning. When asked about the recent share price movement a spokesman refused to comment.
In May the company announced the proposed acquisition of sports data provider RunningBall for a maximum consideration of 120m in a deal described by the company’s joint CEO as potentially the “largest and most significant” acquisition the company has made to date.
Switzerland-based RunningBall provides real-time sports data, covering over 35,000 sporting events “predominantly football “ in 2011 through its network of 1,100 scouts in more than 70 different countries. The country also has operational centres in Austria, Portugal, Cyprus and Malaysia.
RunningBall’s sports data will be used across a range of Perform’s sites, including its Watch&Bet live streaming service, Watch&Trade solution for sportsbook traders, and consumer-facing sports news portals Goal.com, Soccerway.com, Sportal.com.au and spox.com.
At the end of June this year it also agreed to invest more than 40m Turkish Lira (£14.6m) in exchange for a 51% stake in leading Turkish digital media company Mackolik Internet Hizmetleri Ticaret A.S. Mackolik is the owner of Turkish-language sports websites including Mackolik.com and sahadan.com which carry news and information for various events and are the two most-visited sports websites in Turkey with 7.8m and 8.5m average monthly unique users respectively from the five-month period ended May 2012, according to Perform.
In a statement at the time, Perform said: “The acquisition significantly enhances Perform’s presence in Turkey, the fastest growing digital market in Europe, and is in line with Perform’s stated strategy for growth through acquisitions announced at the time of the IPO.”
Perform is also in the midst of a Facebook integration which will ultimately see it roll out 50 dedicated live sports streaming channels on the social network.