Bookmaker William Hill said it has suffered a difficult start to the year after a bad weekend of football results cost it £13 million.
The firm, which has 2,362 betting shops, took the hit when all the favourites in the Premier League won on the middle weekend in January apart from Manchester City.
It added that this one loss-making week of customer-friendly football results had left it behind on its internal expectations to date.
The business, which also runs operations in Australia, the US and Europe, said pre-tax profits for last year fell 9% to £233.9 million following a number of other adverse results as well as £83.4 million of exceptional charges largely relating to an earlier acquisition.
The firm said it had a record World Cup generating £226.8 million of bets and added that comparisons were impacted by favourable results a year earlier.
Shares fell almost 4% today, even though William Hill said it remained confident of meeting its full-year expectations in 2015.
Earlier this month William Hill's £709 million bid to buy online rival 888 collapsed because it could not agree a price with its major shareholders.
The gaming sector is facing pressure over controls on betting shops and gaming machines. Shares across the industry slumped last year as bookies were hit with a surprise hike in gaming machine duty in the Budget.
The business said it closed 108 shops in the year and opened 52, in response to the hike in gaming machine duty to 25% on March 1.
But it added gaming machine revenues were 6% higher at £461.7 million over the period as it rolled out its next-generation Eclipse machines to half of its estate by the third quarter of the year. By the end of the year it had rolled out 70% of these new machines across its stores.
The bookmaker added that online gaming revenues lifted 17% to £274.1 million, while sales from mobile devices grew 117%.
Chief executive James Henderson replaced William Hill's long standing boss Ralph Topping last year.
Mr Henderson said: "Retail remains resilient and, with the largest number of betting shops in the UK and as the leading UK digital operator, we are moving closer to a 'one customer' proposition to deliver a seamless experience for our customers across our channels."
Shore Capital analyst Martin Brown added: "The business continues to be successful merging its customers experience and loyalty between retail and online, something that we believe is increasingly important."
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