This story was published more than 4 years ago.
Cherry Group betting site ComeOn has announced their intention to leave the UK market after they've decided to focus on other markets.
ComeOn has been in the country since 2014 and has been working with their various brands to offer online casino services to punters, but the company has decided to move onto emerging markets. These outside markets include Sweden, Malta, Poland, Germany, and Denmark, among others.
Speaking about the decision ComeOn CEO Lachene Merzoug noted: "UK is a very mature and highly competitive market and the financial risks are big. We have never had a non-compliance breach, but we've seen competitors being fined big numbers and that creates uncertainty.
"At the same time the UK licence has lost it's symbolic value. Before you almost had to have one to be looked upon as a credible company. Today we hold licences in many European countries and given that the UK has never been a big market for us, it's a wise move to put our focus elsewhere."
No timetable for the pullout was available as of press time.
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Comments
For some reason Cherry subsidiary ComeOn doesn't see value operating at the UK market anymore, whether that is due to the high operating costs or the highest competition at this market is not fully clear to me but maybe it's a mix of all those and probably some other reasons.
It is both, there are many casinos doing the same and we will see more withdrawals from the UK in the coming months.
sharpe
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UK market is big, so many competitors came in, and UKGC has tightened up their regulations and observations, and eventually hit fines to some casinos. These are direct and indirect costs for them.
It is reasonable for them to focus on new markets 🙂
It is interesting to see these groups shifting to new markets and going away from where there's a lot of regulatory restrictions (UK and Sweden). I wonder where these companies will actually end up focusing... Asia?
sharpe
I don't think that they will focus on Asian market, because it is a whole mess with illegal casinos.
Some good(?) illegal casinos provide nice signup bonuses like 20~50 dollars with 3~10x wagering with 10x ~ no max withdrawal, more surprisingly no max bet, no games restricted 🙂 And their withdrawal is like 5~10 mins without any ID checks 😀
To be completely honest, this doesn't surprise me and I expect even bigger numbers of operators moving out of the market. It seems that operating in the UK is so risky that it might as well not be worth it.
Yeah, it's quite good question Slim..certainly they will look for a new territories or just concentrating on the regions they've already got a license for..surely loosing the UK business should left a big hole for any company.