Will Greek Legislation Affect London's SportingBet?

Gamblers in Greece are quite disturbed and getting worried about the legislation about online gambling that is coming into effect on December 5. Recently, Betfair pulled out of Greece, although that didn’t seem to affect OPAP stock, the Greek gambling operator. SportingBet (SBT) stock in the meantime, which is trading on the London stock exchange, seems to be trending upwards during the last months, maybe due to the fact that SportingBet is included in the temporarily-licensed gambling companies. Truth is though that no one is 100% certain of what will happen in Greece when Hellenic Gaming Commission’s deadline is met.

You may be wondering how I am correlating Greek gambling legislation with SportingBet stock price. Could it be possible that gambling news in Greece affects a bookmaker miles away, considering that Greece is SportingBet’s third major market after Australia and Spain? Well, William Hill is about to take over Australia and Spain’s operations of SportingBet in an almost concluded deal, presumably leaving Greece as the major market of SportingBet for the time being. It’s now made clearer why we need to look at Centric Multimedia’s stock graph, a company that trades in Athens stock exchange and has a stake of SportingBet.

Centric stock has been consolidating for a year before it “woke up” the last three months and gained almost 300%, climbing from €0.10 to about 0.30. The latest short-term uptrend strangely occurred while the sale of 33% stake of OPAP was announced and Gaming Commission made known of the fines and regulations of online gambling in Greece. Sporting Odds Ltd., a subsidiary of SportingBet Group, is one of the 24 gambling companies that will likely be permitted to accept Greek customers when the gambling market is regulated. We just have to connect the dots to predict a probable spike of Centric stock price in the following weeks. At least I am still permitted to gamble in stocks here in Greece.

Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, but may initiate a long position in CENTR.AT over the next 48 hours.