The betting and gaming operator has been named at the top of the 2006 Top Track 100 league table. With combined annual sales of £7,4 billion and an operating profit of £242m, Gala Coral is now looking at a stock market floatation which could come as early as autumn 2007.
Betfred and Bet365 also made the fifth Top Track 100 annual league table published by The Sunday Times and sponsored by KPMG.
Family-owned Betfred ranked 43 with sales of £751m and an operating profit of £2m. The bookmaker has 600 betting shops and plans to add a further 250 by 2008.
Bet365, ranked 56, has grown phenomenally in the five years since Denise Coates persuaded her father Peter to refocus the high-street betting chain he founded in the 1970s on the internet. Sales have grown more than fivefold since 2002, rising to £605m in 2005. Bet365, owned and run by the Coates family, is based in Stoke-on-Trent and employs 750 staff.
In separate news, software provider Alphameric announced a £8.5m deal to provide a new EPoS system across Gala Coral\’s entire UK estate of betting shops.
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