Greek Organisation of Football Prognostics : OPAP first-quarter profit up 43.5%

ATHENS (Reuters) - OPAP, Europe's fourth-largest betting firm by revenue, on Wednesday posted a 43.5% rise in first-quarter net profit thanks to cost savings and a growing video lottery business.

Net profit in the January-to-March period stood at 57.2 million euros, up from 39.8 million euros in the same period last year, OPAP said.

The figure was above an average forecast of 44.8 million euros in a recent Reuters poll.

OPAP said it operated 19,965 video-lottery terminals in Greece and 6.321 in Cyprus at the end of March.

(Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas, Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Karolina Tagaris)