The sports betting and gaming entertainment giant Entain revealed it has launched a Group-wide employee share ownership plan that would provide its colleagues in the UK and worldwide with the chance to share its global businesses’ growth and success.
Now, about 22,500 employees at all levels of the business are given the chance to apply to join the ShareSave plan of the gambling operator. As the company itself revealed, in the UK, where Entain currently holds a total of 1,885 Ladbrokes and Coral high-street betting shops, almost 14,000 retail colleagues will be able to apply to participate in the plan. With monthly contributions at a minimum of £5, the British gambling giant hopes to make share ownership accessible for everyone, including people across Entain’s international operations.
Entain revealed that its ShareSave plan will be initially offered to employees in countries where there is currently around 99% of the operator’s workforce, also including Bulgaria, India and the Philippines. A £100 monthly cap on contributions had been placed initially by the company, which hopes to make the share ownership plan more appealing to all of its employees.
At the end of the three-year period in which employees would be able to save between £5 to £100, they will be given the opportunity to purchase Entain shares for 20% less than their market value at the beginning of the invitation period.
At a time when a large number of investors are encouraging the companies they invest in to make some changes that would show how devoted they are to environmental and social problems, Entain believes that its share plan demonstrated that concerns about employee share ownership were among the main objectives of its strategy.
Entain’s Online NGR Rises While High-Street Betting Shops Suffer from Covid-19 Restrictions
Apart from rolling out its ShareSave plan earlier today, the British gambling group also published its trading update for the first fiscal quarter of 2021, estimating a strong start to the year with growth registered across its major online markets.
Bookmakers in the UK and globally have benefited from an increase in online betting during the coronavirus pandemic, which has helped them compensate to a certain extent for the massive blow suffered by high-street betting shops over the period because of the restrictions imposed by Governments to tackle the further spread of the infection.
Entain revealed that it had a strong first quarter, which continued the momentum registered at the end of 2020, as previously projected. The company’s online net gaming revenue rose by 33%, marking the 21st consecutive quarter of double-digit online NGR growth for the operator. As mentioned above, the British gambling giant said it saw stable growth in all major markets excluding Germany.
Furthermore, the company managed to complete acquisitions of Enlabs AB in the Baltics and Bet.pt in Portugal, with the deals marking further progress of Entain’s strategic expansion into new regulated markets. The gambling operator saw its overall net gaming revenue decline by 13% for the three months that ended on March 31st, despite the 33% growth registered in its online revenue.
On the other hand, the retail operations of Entain were significantly affected by the restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic, as the company’s betting shops were almost entirely closed for the first quarter.
- Author
Olivia Cole
