Australian betting agency Sports Alive has been placed into voluntary liquidation.
The ACT licensed booked called in liquidators on Thursday last week. Punters will now face a nervous wait to see if they can get their money out, while investors face substantial losses. The largest investor in the company was the Tasmanian Government’s betting agency, TOTE Tasmania. Other notable investors include sports industry player Peter Sidwell and the Victorian bookmaker Gary Walsh.
Sports Alive is required to have a $250,000 bond to cover punters in the event of a collapse, but this will unlikely be enough to cover outstanding account balances. There is a report that one punter has over $110,000 in an account with them.
Sports Alive was formed after the merger of number of betting agencies, including GlobalSportsBet and Sportsacumen. It was best known for its provision of spread betting. The company appears to have gown down hill very quickly. It is understood the business produced profits of $4 million in 2008-09 and $5 million in 2009-10. One industry insider says the company has simply been poorly run over the past twelve months.
“While the big boys will soon swallow up the smaller Australian bookmakers, this was not the cause of the Sports Alive crash,” one bookmaker told SmartCompany this morning.
“It was more a case of a badly run company.”
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