Enic sells ukbetting website for £3m

Britain's oldest gambling website, ukbetting.com, is to join the stock market after Enic, its parent company backed by the Bahamas-based tycoon Joe Lewis, sold the site for a 500 per cent profit.

Enic paid £500,000 for ukbetting.com in May last year and yesterday disposed of the business for a minimum of £3m to a newly created company, ukbetting, that is backed by Eric Semel, a 32-year-old former Las Vegas casino manager.

Shares in Enic, run by Daniel Levy, were unchanged at 39.5p. Enic will be paid half the sum in cash and half in shares and could get an extra £3m for ukbetting.com if it beats performance targets.

Mr Semel plans to float ukbetting on London's junior exchange, the Alternative Investment Market, in the middle of next month and raise about £6m through a placing. He said the purchase of the website, which began trading in August 1998, will only be completed if the float is a success.

Ukbetting.com specialises in taking bets on horse racing, football and other sports gambling and currently has around 8,000 customers. In the 11 months to May the website had revenues of £7m and made a pre-tax loss of £457,000.

Enic, the owner of Tottenham Hotspur football club, has been cutting back its exposure to gambling.