Greek gambling monopoly still battling

The severe Greek economic recession, allied to an increased tax burden has been cited as the reason for a drop in profits at the Greek gambling monopoly OPAP, recently acquired by the Emma Delta group .

The gambling group’s third quarter net profit plunged 61 percent y-o-y to Euro 44.4 million, although it was better by several million Euros than expected by pessimistic analysts.

Management blamed the current economic crisis and a 30 percent rise in government tax on GGR, which cancelled out a positive performance up 0.7 percent to Euro 897.6 million in the quarter.

The bad news has prompted OPAP CEO Kamil Zeigler to postpone the launch of video lottery terminals to the third quarter of 2014.