When announcing its results for the 53 weeks ended 1 January 2008, William Hill said that 2007 had seen further progress in developing our operations in Spain and Italy in conjunction with its joint venture partner, Codere.

The company said that in Spain, the joint venture had launched its Spanish brand - Victoria Apuestas and had developed the infrastructure needed to manage and control the joint venture operations.

The company said that it is expecting to be awarded an operational licence for the Madrid region imminently. It said that it aims to secure up to 34 owned outlets in the region by the end of the year together with a similar number of third party outlets, subject to obtaining local licensing and planning permissions.

It said that it had successfully secured one of the three licences available in the Basque region of Spain, which entitles it to open betting outlets in that region.

William Hill hopes to have 8 betting shops and 56 other betting outlets operational by the end of the year in this region. It said that some of the unsuccessful bidders had challenged the award, and that the Basque government had indicated that it would respond to this appeal by the end of February 2008.

William Hill noted that in December 2006, as part of a process of deregulating betting within Italy, William Hill and Codere had been jointly awarded 20 concessions to operate horseracing-betting shops, 7 concessions to operate sports betting shops and 28 concessions relating to sports betting points.

It said that progress had been made in 2007 in identifying and acquiring locations to exploit these concessions and under the terms of the concessions, and that they have to be ready to commence trading by September 2008 and that the majority were expected to be operational before then.

The company said that it was also investigating potential shop acquisition opportunities in Italy. It said that remote licences relating to horseracing and sports betting had also been applied for and granted and that the internet betting sites had commenced trading in February of this year.

William Hill said that it expects that it will take a period of time to develop these opportunities.

When announcing its preliminary statement of results for the year ended 31 December 2007, Ladbrokes said that during the year in Italy 13 existing betting shops had been acquired for a cost of £16.7 million, giving it a total of 17 acquired shops by the year end. It said that these shops had traded in line with its expectations during 2007.

Ladbrokes is now represented in the major cities of Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples and Genoa and since the year end has completed the acquisition of a further eight shops around Turin and Vicenza.

Ladbrokes said that the rollout programme for the 142 new Bersani licences continues, following the licence award in March 2007, with the first shop and corners opened in December 2007. It said that whilst finding premises for new licences remains challenging, they are scheduled to be opened throughout 2008.

The new local language internet site, Ladbrokes.it, was launched in November 2007. Ladbrokes said that its odds service provider, Pianetta Scommesse had increased its customer numbers during the year.

Ladbrokes said that gross win for the year was £6.5 million, with operational and administration costs of £7.3 million and duty of £0.8 million, resulting in a start-up loss of £1.6 million for the year.

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