After 20 years in the industry, it looks like the Mansion Group is to cease trading as an online casino operator.
The announcement was made to brand partners on the 16th October 2023, with the company citing they would cease all B2C (business to customer) operations from 26th of October.
For UK players this doesn’t really mean much at all, since Mansion pulled their brands out of the UK back in January, and their sports betting site, MansionBet, went the year before.
However, since the UK had been the group’s core market for a long time, the name is still well remembered.
It’s a funny situation this one, because the group don’t sound like they are ceasing trading completely, but as a 2 brand casino outfit that is closing down their casinos, what are they planning to do instead?
The Mansion Group Story
Launching in 2004 with MansionCasino, their flagship brand, the Mansion Group were around to experience the online casino boom, although at this point they were not yet operational in the UK.
They started out in Gibraltar, adding another office in Bulgaria at a later date, with their customers coming from Europe.
In 2006 they signed their first football shirt sponsorship deal with Tottenham Hotspur, seeing the Mansion brand on the front of their shirts until the 2009/10 season.
This gained Mansion a lot of recognition in the UK and farther afield, and helping to grow their customer base enough to launch a second brand, Casino.com, in 2007.
It wasn’t until 2014 that they got a UK gambling license of their own though, and to celebrate, they signed sponsorship deals with both AFC Bournemouth and Crystal Palace FC, firmly implanting their brand in the minds of British players. This was also around the time that their first sportsbook, MansionBet, was launched.
Things seemed to be going well.
Over the following years the Mansion Group won several awards marking them out as a responsible and fair operator, they launched another site, Slots Heaven, and gained additional operating licenses in Spain and Ontario.
Then in 2022, British punters were surprised to learn that MansionBet would be closing down so that the group could focus on their casino brands.
It clearly wasn’t making enough money, but it didn’t seem like a terminal issue for Mansion.
Then, just 10 months later, the group announced they would be leaving the UK market. It was a strategic move to allow them to put all their focus on the areas where they were most profitable apparently.
That as about 9 months ago.
Now, their 2 remaining brands, Mansion Casino and Casino.com are do to close entirely.
It’s an odd winding down from a company that seemed to be going from strength to strength.
Why Have Mansion Closed Their Online Casino?
We don’t know, we can only speculate, but usually when a business closes down it’s because they are either not making enough money or because they can make more money doing something else.
Although their might be some truth in the first line of reasoning, the latter could be the main truth in this case.
When Mansion Group closed their brands in the UK, they kept the domain names and turned them into advertising sites.
It could well be that they are now making more from advertising than they ever made as a casino, so have decided to do the same with their sites in other territories too.
If those other sites also happened to be struggling, this would make even more sense of their steady withdrawals and brand closures.