Wagering giant William Hill, which runs the Sportingbet, Centrebet and TomWaterhouse.com brands locally, has blamed an increase in fees charged by state racing bodies for a 3 per cent fall in bets placed in the past quarter.
William Hill said it had actively promoted sports and racing products in Australia that are more profitable, which had dampened wagering values, but improved the division's margins.
The London-listed wagering company declined to provide dollar figures, but it said amounts wagered in Australia fell 3 per cent in the 13 weeks ended September 30. The drop in the value of bets comes despite a 1 per cent rise in the volume of wagers, the company said in an interim management statement released on Tuesday evening.
Group chief executive James Henderson said William Hill Australia, which is run by Tom Waterhouse and accounts for 7 per cent of the company's revenue, had responded to race field fee rises in states like Victoria and Queensland.
"The progress made to date in William Hill Australia is delivering strong profit growth," Mr Henderson said in a statement. "Our work to optimise the customer base, following the onset of increased race field fees, has improved the gross win margin, with slightly reduced amounts wagered, as expected."
"More importantly, we are well positioned to compete during the busy Spring Carnival period," he said.
State racing organisations have traditionally derived most of their income from revenue sharing arrangements linked to totalisator betting run by Tabcorp in ACT, NSW and Victoria, or Tatts group in the Northern Territory and every other state except Western Australia.
But a switch in customer preferences to both fixed odds betting, and the building up of market share by online-only operators, has meant the racing bodies are facing deteriorating revenues.
This year Racing Victoria and Racing Queensland have changed their race field fee regimes, in an attempt to plug the hole.
But the fee rises could similarly do harm if the experience of William Hill is repeated across the nation's largest bookmakers.
Tabcorp chief executive David Attenborough and Sportsbet chief executive Cormac Barry do not often fall on the same side of an opinion about the wagering industry but both have threatened, as William Hill has done, to promote more profitable products to their customers in an attempt to avoid the higher fees charged by some racing organisations.
On Tuesday, William Hill said its Australian gross win margin improved by 1.6 percentage points to 10.2 per cent. In the three quarters to September 30, the calendar year to date, the measure was 9.1 per cent.
The company said it also stopped doing business with "unprofitable clients" after the race field fee increases. "We continue to review whether these changes will, over time, help to offset the race field fee increases," the group said.
William Hill Australia revenue rose 14 per cent in the quarter, on a pro-forma, local currency basis, and 10 per cent in the year to date.
The company said the business showed "positive signs of improvement" on the back of better efficiency and investment in "user experience". The company spent, on average, $501 to acquire a new customer, which was 26 per cent less than the same time last year.
