Gaming is a high growth market worth an estimated $335 billion and predicted to further grow to $385 billion by 2012. Whilst revenues in the traditional land-based channels have remained stable, much of the market growth is being driven by the rapid increase in online gaming. This is being enabled by leveraging market penetration of technology such as the internet and mobile phones to make it easier for customers to participate.

Within this context the global pools/tote market is worth an estimated $80 billion with Sportech Inc., comprising of Scientific Games Racing and Autotote Enterprises, being a major player with a 17% global market share and 50% market share in North America. Outside the UK market, pools/tote betting is the most popular form of sports betting and in many cases the only legal form.

Over 650 million people watched the 2010 World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands which demonstrates the continued growth in sports' global appeal. Combining this with the continued improvement in customers' access to technology, the sports and gaming markets are on trend to continue to perform well.

Source: H2 Gambling Capital 2010

The UK gaming market continues to show strong and encouraging signs of growth. In the last twelve months, more people in the UK visited an online gaming website than Facebook, with over 3.2 million people visiting online gaming websites.

The UK betting market is one of the most competitive markets in the world with every betting type freely available from fixed odds to spread betting, exchanges betting and pools. Based on these facts the UK gaming market is forecast to grow to over £10 billion in value by 2012.

Sportech is a major player in the UK pools market after consolidating the Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters brands to form The Football Pools.