GVC completes migration of Ladbrokes Coral brands

GVC Holdings has completed the migration of all brands within the Ladbrokes Coral business onto its proprietary technology platform.

The migration means that GVC, which acquired Ladbrokes Coral in March 2018, now counts Ladbrokes, Coral, Gala Bingo, Gala Casino and Gala Spins among the brands on its platform.

GVC said that the migration was the largest in the history of the business and was one of the most complex processes ever carried in the gambling industry.

The final part of the process saw 12.5m Ladbrokes customers migrated to GVC, with a total of 25m players moved across to the platform. Despite the scale of the project, GVC pointed out it was completed on time and within budget.

“I am delighted that this critical and hugely complex stage of the Ladbrokes Coral integration process has been completed so successfully,” GVC’s chief operating officer Shay Segev said. “It is a great testament to the sophistication of our technology and the quality of our teams, and it is particularly impressive that they have managed to finalise it during this period of remote working.

“It also positions the business even better to emerge from the current crisis from a position of strength.”

According to GVC, the migration will deliver greater efficiencies, stability, speed to market, product development and customer propositions, as well as allow it to adapt to regulatory change and deliver a range of tools and initiatives to support and promote a safer gambling environment.

GVC said that it would now proceed with the remaining process and back office integrations, with this set to deliver £130.0m (€145.7m/$157.5m) in annualised synergies by the end of 2021.

In addition, GVC said the completion of the migration would free up technical resources that can be redeployed to drive product innovation and execute further M&A.

“The GVC integration model has proved itself time and again to be extremely effective at integrating large-scale operations with minimal disruption to our underlying business.” Segev said.

“As a result, we are confident in our ability to take advantage of the attractive M&A opportunities which we believe will present themselves to us in the future while further boosting the growth of our existing business.”

Last month, GVC reported a year-on-year rise in revenue for the first quarter, despite business slowing down due to the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) global pandemic, but chose to cancel a planned dividend payment due to ongoing uncertainty over the outbreak.

In a trading update, GVC said total group net gaming revenue (NGR) for the three months through to 31 March was 1% higher than in the same period last year.