Quinn's wager hopes on new betting enterprise

Former billionaire and Ballyconnell businessman Seán Quinn and his family have back a new new online gambling business, Quinnbet, which is set to be launched shortly.

Wholly owned by Mr Quinn, the company will however be run by his son Sean Jnr together with other family members. Mr Quinn's son-in-law, Stephen Kelly, will act as the betting firm's chief financial officer, while Mr Quinn's nephew Seamus McMahon is named as a third director.

Both Mr Quinn Jr and Mr Kelly are already named as directors of a company that owns the website Belbridge Consultancy, with Mr Quinn Snr named as a director of Mr McMahon's Belturbet based business SMC Products.

Quinnbet is expected to launch a formal press launch statement over the next few days.

QuinnBet is licensed in Ireland under licence number 1012923 and is regulated under the Betting (Amendment) Act 2015.

Partner to the new Quinn family venture is the London-based FSB Technology, which designs gaming websites and also provides risk management software. Quinnbet's website is licensed under Irish law, while the UK authorities have licensed FSB.

QuinnBet furthermore now has accounts on Facebook and Twitter to promote the site.

Quinnbet says that it will offer thousands of different betting markets on horse racing, soccer, Gaelic games, tennis and other events, and the move to online gaming, including a suite of mobile phone applications, now considered to be vital to bookmaking businesses.

“Based in the Republic of Ireland we are a wholly owned Irish Company. Our goal is to always provide our customers with the most positive gaming experience possible. We believe gambling should always be entertaining and are completely committed to doing all that we can to encourage our customers to gamble responsibly. To help achieve this we have extensive safeguards built into our website which allows our customers to stay in control of their gambling.â€

Former property tycoon Mr Quinn Sr, once estimated to be worth in the region of €4 billion, its understood secured the licence for the gambling company earlier this week.

However he and his family suffered the loss of both their insurance and manufacturing empires amid the economic crash, and its founder declared bankrupt in 2012. Mr Quinn Sr was discharged from bankruptcy 2015.

Mr Quinn is no longer involved with Quinn Industrial Holdings, which in 2014 with his backing acquired key elements of his former group of companies.