Winning losers for Sportingbet

SPORTINGBET turned the form book on its head today by lifting profit goals for the year after cashing in on the failure of several heavily-backed favourites at the Cheltenham Festival.

The online bookie took 'hundreds of thousands' in wins as Moscow Flyer, Barracuda and Rooster Booster failed to live up to punters' expectations. Andrew McIver, finance director, said: 'It's just the way the horses run.

'There were four favourites that were strongly fancied and three of them didn't come in.'

Operating profits are expected to be at least £19.5m for the year to 31 March, up from £14.5m a year ago and £1.5m higher than City forecasts. Turnover at the Cheltenham festival soared 60%.

Shares rose 2 1/4p to 83 3/4p. Today's upgrade comes a year after Sportingbet blamed several short-odds winners at Cheltenham and 'unfavourable' results for a profit warning that wiped 26% off its market value.

The number of bets placed with the group since the start of January has grown 49% to 9.1 million with volumes in Europe up 111%. Business in the US, Sportingbet's main market, rose 27% to 5.7 million bets.

Online bookie ukbetting is branching into Europe with the e4.5m (£3m) acquisition of Austrian-based GoldBet.