LONDON, April 18, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- ukbetting plc announced today that it has been chosen as BTopenworld's first sports betting partner for its new sports content and wagering site. This follows BTopenworld's announcement today that it is to create a leading sports and bets online service which will focus on sports betting, lotteries, bingo and casinos.
As part of the agreement ukbetting.com will offer a complete range of bets across all sports with a big selection of early prices available on racing and football and visitors will be able to bet on almost every sport. They will also be providing daily sports news, previews, reports and live scores through their market leading sportinglife.com brand together with the U.K.'s most comprehensive betting tips, data and information service via their bettingzone.co.uk portal.
The new BTopenworld sports and bets service will launch in April 2002.
Eric Semel, Chief Executive of ukbetting plc, commented: "This is a great partnership for us which reaffirms our position as a leading sports content and betting company. It is another strong strategic partnership which will widen our audience and strengthen our position in the market and follows on the heels of our recent announcement of an agreement with leading mobile services provider, Orange."
John Raczka, BTopenworld Senior Vice-President of Content, added: "ukbetting, with its excellent sports content and first-class online betting operations, was an obvious choice for our new service and follows our policy of building focused, market-leading destination sites with best-of-breed partners. We have already established leading games and music destination sites in the U.K., and we will soon have an unrivalled offering as an ISP across all three categories."
Notes for Editors
About ukbetting plc
ukbetting plc (AIM:UKB.L), the digital wagering operator is the owner and operator of sportinglife.com, sportal.com, ukbetting.com, sportscard, totalbet.com and the bettingzone.co.uk.
About BTopenworld
BTopenworld, BT plc's mass-marketing Internet division, is one of the U.K.'s leading Internet service providers delivering broadband and narrowband services to more than 1.5 million business and consumer customers in the U.K. through www.btopenworld.com. The company offers a wide range of Internet access packages and payment options to satisfy the changing needs of consumer and business customers. For narrowband customers, these range across Pay-as-you-go, BTopenworld for BT surf packages offering unmetered Internet access evenings and weekends, BTopenworld Anytime offering access to the Internet available 24/7 and BTopenworld Connect Anytime, a 24/7 package designed specifically for business customers.
BTopenworld's broadband products cover a choice of download speeds, from 500kbps to up to 2Mbps, single or multi-user set-ups for PC or Mac, and static or dynamic IP addresses. BTopenworld also offers many other Internet services to support customer's online experience, including email services, SpeechMail (charged at NationalCall rates), Cyberpatrol, a WAP portal and more. The company also provides virtual ISP services to a network of corporate partners who reach an additional 1.1 million customers. Alison Ritchie is the chief executive officer of BTopenworld.