Littlewoods Merges With Vernos
7th November, 2007
Littlewoods, one of the biggest names in online gaming was given a go ahead by competition commission to merge with another huge player, Vernos.
Sportech bought Littlewoods in 2000 and hasn’t been wasting time since. In March this year it started negotiating the possibility of purchasing Vernos from the competitors, Ladbrokes.
In May the sale prospect was referred to the competition commission for their inspection to the Office of Fair Trading. The decision followed allowing the companies to merge, as the decision was considered to "unlikely result in a substantial lessening of competition".
This was a very surprising outcome as now Sportech is in charge of 750,000 weekly pools punters and virtually all of the pools market. Nevertheless, Sportech insists that pools products were already up against strong competition because of unexpected fast development from various gaming and betting products.
Ian Penrose, Sportech’s chief executive stated that he was very happy with the decision and feels it’s the right one for everybody involved.
