Betfair, the world's largest betting exchange, is to follow rivals Ladbrokes and William Hill by moving part of its business to Gibraltar to slash its tax burden.
Betfair, founded 10 years ago by one-time professional gambler Andrew Black and former JP Morgan derivatives trader Ed Wray, said it expected to save £20m a year as a result of the switch, which will see its betting exchange operate under a Gibraltar licence from Wednesday.
Betfair currently pays 15% tax on gross profit from betting, but this will drop to 1% following the move.
Betfair also said its revenue in the three months to the end of January was £77m, up 6.2% on the same period last year.
In a trading update, Betfair said sports betting revenue was up 8.6%, while games revenue grew by 8.2%, but poker revenue dropped more than 20%.
CEO David Yu said the group was confident of meeting market expectations for its full financial year, which runs to the end of April.
'Following the successful migration of our technology infrastructure to our new data centre in Ireland, we are rolling out a planned series of major improvements to our sports betting product which will help to drive revenue growth,' he added.
Late last year, the company announced that it would create 100 customer service and data centre management jobs in Dublin. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange.
