During the last 12 months, the 50 largest gambling companies saw $140 billion wiped away from their total value, according to Global Betting and Gaming Consultants.
“The economy has gotten a lot worse than most people expected, and it’s unlikely to improve in 2009,” Warwick Bartlett, the agency’s owner, told Gaming Industry Media at the International Gaming Expo in late January. Click here to listen to more of Mr. Bartlett’s thoughts.
The international gambling consultancy found the biggest losers to be the casino operators Las Vegas Sands Corp. and MGM Mirage, who have seen values fall by 93 percent and 88 percent, respectively.
The world's largest gambling company by market capitalization is now OPAP S.A., the monopoly provider of sports betting services and numerical lotteries in Greece, according to Global Betting and Gaming Consultants,
“It is perhaps surprising that OPAP and Greece are under threat from the liberalization of gambling laws across Europe, but the market is telling us that they expect OPAP to maintain its monopoly,” the consultancy said in a statement.
Additionally, the consultancy said United Kingdom-based companies Rank Group and William Hill, once listed as the seventh and eighth largest gambling companies, have now fallen to 36th and 20th, respectively.