"In other words, the system will have user-friendly features that are familiar to the Asian players," Ascot Sport Sdn Bhd senior general manager Ooi Lee Meng told Business Times via email recently.
BCorp is buying a 70 per cent stake in Ascot Sports Sdn Bhd from its chairman Tan Sri Vincent Tan for RM525 million in cash.
Ascot will now have the exclusive approval to operate sports betting and distributed in those states where Sports Toto has a presence.
"They will be distributed in strategic locations in major cities or towns with large urban conurbation. We will commence with about one-third Toto outlets - 220 outlets," he said.
Ooi said Ascot will introduce the country's first of kind sport betting at the beginning of the next European Leagues season, around the end of August or beginning of September 2010.
"We will offer the four major leagues namely the English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Spanish Premira Liga and the Italian Serie A. When Champions League, UEFA Cup and FA commences, we will offer them as well," he said.
Following the government's decision to legalise sports betting, Ascot Sports has been re-issued its sports-betting licence which was suspended in 2004.
Ascot Sports surrendered its licence offering horse racing bets in 1990. It got it back in 2003 but was not allowed to operate a year later.
Asked why the company did not offer football bets back then, Ooi said, "In the 1990s, football betting was not popular yet. It was vitalised in the 2000s due to live-televised matches on television."
Ooi noted that currently there is a big illegal market on sports betting in Malaysia and therefore it is important to move into that segment.
It was estimated that the illegal sports betting market in Malaysia is at as much as RM20 billion a year.
Ooi believes that RM20 billion was the extrapolated market size by using the same percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) achieved in sports betting in Hong Kong and Singapore.
OSK Research Sdn Bhd said in a report that the sports-betting market in Malaysia could be around 0.5 per cent to 0.6 per cent of GDP, which implies a potential legal sports betting market of RM6.5 billion to RM7.7 billion.
Analyst Keith Wee, who maintained an overweight on the gaming sector, believes the liberalisation of the sports betting in Malaysia is a positive step as the government is being pragmatic in acknowledging that there is a sizeable market to be tapped.
Otherwise, it would be big revenue loss to the government.
by btimes.com.my
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