An appeal has spared SPS Sportsoft, the UK-registered business subsidiary of Kenyan betting group SportPesa, from dissolution by Companies House. 

SPS had been issued a 60-day warning by the UK’s business registry to explain its inactivity, having failed to file 2019 accounts due last December.

Companies House issued its ‘strike-off warning’ on 14 September, however the registrar has since discontinued action – issuing an update that SPS had ‘shown cause for its business not to be struck-off the registry’.

Though yet to disclose its 2019 accounts, SPS had provided a business confirmation statement and filed changes to its directorship and business address in Liverpool during 2021.

Had Companies House sanctioned SPS’ termination, SportPesa’s UK subsidiary would have surrendered reported assets of £13 million.

2018 accounts showed that SPS had generated a profit after-tax of £11.8 million, with the company maintaining 12-month creditor liabilities of £9 million which would have been extinguished had SPS been dissolved.  

Meanwhile, SportPesa is still challenging the Kenya government’s demand that the bookmaker pay a KSH 15 billion (€100m) tax dispute on player winnings, which saw its licence abruptly terminated in the summer of 2019.

Regulatory developments saw President Uhuru Kenyatta pledge that his government would offer bookmaker’s amnesty as his cabinet agreed to lower the nation’s blanket gambling revenue tax from 20% to a reported 7.5%.

However, no reprieve was handed to SportPesa as its plea to reinstate its gambling licence was revoked by Kenya’s Betting Control Board despite the company changing ownership to Milestone Games Limited.