Sportingbet PLC - Completion of acquisition

31 January 2012

Sportingbet Plc

Completion of acquisition of leading Danish online betting operators

Danbook Limited and Scandic Bookmakers Limited

Further to the announcement made on 12 October 2011, Sportingbet Plc ("Sportingbet (LSE: SBT.L - news) "), a leading online sports betting and gaming group, today announces that it has completed the acquisition of the entire issued share capital of Danbook Limited ("Danbook") and Scandic Bookmakers Limited ("Scandic"). The aggregate maximum consideration payable for both Danbook and Scandic is £8.5 million, comprising the cash sum of £4 million and £0.5 million of Sportingbet shares at completion, with a further cash sum of £4 million subject to the satisfaction of certain performance conditions. The acquisition has been funded by a new 3 year £8 million facility with Barclays Bank PLC (NYSE: BCS-PA - news) . The loan is repayable in annual instalments, commencing January 2013.

Danbook and Scandic are both focused on the Danish market, where they offer customers a full range of fixed odds sports betting, casino, poker and games. They were successfully awarded new Danish gambling licences in December, and launched websites compliant with the new Danish regulations on 1 January 2012. The conditions to the acquisitions have therefore now been satisfied.

Sportingbet already operates licensed businesses in Denmark under both its Sportingbet and Centrebet brands, and the combination of these businesses with Danbook and Scandic will give Sportingbet scale in an important, regulated market.

In order to satisfy the Sportingbet share component of the consideration, Sportingbet has issued 1,429,240 new ordinary shares of 0.1 pence each ("Ordinary Shares") to the shareholders of Danbook and Scandic in aggregate, representing approximately 0.2% of the total issued share capital immediately prior to such issue. Application has been made for such new Ordinary Shares to be admitted to the premium listed segment of the Official List of the UK Listing Authority and to trading on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: LSE.L - news) 's main market for listed securities ("Admission"). It is expected that Admission and commencement of dealings in the new Ordinary Shares will become effective at 8.00am on or around 3 February 2012. The new Ordinary Shares will rank pari passu with the existing issued Ordinary Shares.

As a result, as at the date of this announcement, Sportingbet's issued share capital consists of 666,837,517 Ordinary Shares with voting rights. Sportingbet holds no Ordinary Shares in Treasury. Therefore, the total number of voting rights in Sportingbet is 666,837,517.

The above figure may be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in Sportingbet under the FSA's Disclosure and Transparency Rules.

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