Betting company’s figures impacted by lockdown

Similar to last year, the lockdown, which started on 9 March 2021, have reportedly impacted Automated Systems Ltd, a listed company engaged in the betting business. Its football operation was stopped as from that date and no race meetings were held during the reporting quarter, l’Express reported.

ASL are responsible for the running of a totalisator system (tote) of betting on races in Mauritius organised by the Mauritius Turf Club branded under Supertote and the organisation of fixed-odds betting on foreign football matches branded under Superscore.

The group’s Income for the first quarter slightly decreased to reach Rs 35.5M compared to Rs 37.7M at 31 March 2020. The group reported losses of Rs 6.2M at 31 March 2021 compared to losses of Rs 8.3M for the previous year’s corresponding quarter. 

The subsidiary Company, Megawin Ltd, which operates in Ivory Coast, showed an improvement of 52.8% compared to 31 March 2020. 

The second quarter to 30 June 2021 is also expected to be impacted by the lockdown locally with football betting having resumed only on 1 May 2021 and the postponement of the start of the horse racing season in Mauritius to 15 May 2021. 

The directors believe that, at this stage, due to the lack of visibility, it is impossible to make any precise forecast and expect the end of year results to be impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the company claimed it went through a similar situation the previous year and showed very satisfactory results.