The industry is progressing as you would expect any rapidly developing, relatively unregulated industry to do so. In the beginning, anyone could open a sportsbook, get post-up money and basically choose whether or not to behave honestly. Rapidly, serious competition from business minded companies has driven many of these backyard operators from the market. Some have disappeared in the night, regrettably, others have been sold and integrated into others. Some, regrettably, continue to operate. Their time will come, and this industry will continue the path of consolidation as the big players absorb or crush the smaller, less secure ones.
VIP Sports has made some offers in the last 12 months - and we are finding that the smaller, more fragile books almost always have an over-inflated idea of their own worth. We have preferred not to buy, rather than buy at the wrong price.
Our business is very different from the Sports Market situation. Most of our players are recreational gamblers who would not leave tens of thousands of dollars in an offshore account. Most of our players have account balances in the hundreds, rather than thousands of dollars, and each one of them is welcome to withdraw their entire balance at any time - it will be our pleasure to demonstrate that we have the money safe!
