EXCLUSIVE: Superbet CEO
talent into the business, and a number of hugely talented people here who built the business to where it is today. So Sacha felt it was the right time to bring in someone externally to steer the ship. He’s someone I’ve known for a number of years and respected for the brand he built, so I jumped at the chance to come here. SBC: You mentioned the influx of cash from Blackstone. Does that mean you’re going to be looking for M&A rather than organic growth in the markets you’re in? JH: Well, the objective for us is to try and grow our footprint and revenue and our customer base. Where we
can do that organically we will, but trying to go live in multiple markets simultaneously is probably not practical. So, if situations arise for inorganic opportunities we’ll certainly look at them and we’re open-minded about looking at any opportunity that comes our way. But we don’t have predefined plans about doing one or the other, it’ll be on a case by case basis. SBC: You’ve already touched on Superbet’s investment in tech; you acquired a partner not soon after you joined the company? JH: Axilis had been a partner of Superbet for a while; it was previously a B2B engineering company that
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I THINK PEOPLE RECOGNISE THAT TECHNOLOGY CAN BE A KEY DIFFERENTIATOR, PARTICULARLY THE EXTENT TO WHICH PEOPLE CAN HAVE IT IN-HOUSE partnered with businesses in the US but it had been working on Superbet engineering over the course of the last couple of years. It allowed us to bring in Bruno Kovacic as CTO. He was involved in Microsoft and he’s well known in the technology community in Zagreb. And he has helped build a platform
that is scalable. Once we had someone with those skills, it made sense to try and bring them in-house to work as part of the Superbet Group rather than just as a B2B provider. SBC: It seems to be a big arms race to own your own technology these days, as we’ve seen through deals between 888 and BetBright, and more recently
THE ONLINE BUSINESS IS RELATIVELY NEW, IN THAT IT ONLY LAUNCHED IN 2015, SO THERE’S STILL PLENTY OF HEADROOM FOR GROWTH
DraftKings and SBTech. Why is it so important? JH: Technology is a key enabler of the strategy for almost any betting business, over the course of the last couple of years and it will be in the future. I think people recognise that technology can be a key differentiator, particularly the extent to which people can have it in-house. This acquisition is reflective of that. SBC: You were talking about other markets where you can make a difference. Can you share which ones you’re going to be specifically focusing on? JH: Yeah, obviously we’re already live in Poland and Romania and there are several other markets in the region that have similar characteristics, where there is full regulation and the idea of multichannel plays well as it has done in the UK previously. I’d rather not be too specific about it, but Croatia, Serbia, Czech Republic and Slovakia are markets with similar size and characteristics. They’re all attractive in one way or another. SBC: Okay, so lots of new potential markets. I’m not too familiar with the retail setup in Romania. Are there dedicated betting premises? JH: They’re dedicated betting shops, so Superbet has over 1,000 betting shops between Romania and Poland. They are fully regulated and primarily focused on sports betting, but also have gaming in them similar to the shops in the UK. And the rollout of SSBTs is starting in those markets as well, which is not as advanced as it is in some other jurisdictions. They look similar to the UK aside from horse racing. The rest of the products in terms of pre match betting, live betting, gaming or lotto all have the same characteristics as the other markets would be accustomed to in Western Europe. SBC: Okay, so what do people in Romania bet on day-to-day if horseracing is not so high on the agenda? JH: Well, it’s pretty much like most of the other businesses, football is their primary driver of both turnover, revenue and customer acquisition. Tennis is also very popular in the region, particularly online and in-play,
but in retail it’s very popular too. So yeah, outside of horseracing, it’s pretty similar to the profile of business you would expect to see elsewhere. SBC: I’m assuming the UK has very little interest given the competition and the taxation at the moment, despite it holding a similar market profile? JH: Yeah, exactly right. It’s not on the agenda at all, not any time soon at least. There were loads of the operators from the UK, but now there’s more attractive growth in investment opportunities elsewhere. I’m seeing people sort of focus on what’s in the US and in other international markets, both organic and M&A, because it feels like there’s better operating environments outside of the UK in the immediate future. SBC: That’s interesting. Are you
...WHEN WE THINK WE’VE GOT A TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM TO GO TO WAR WITH, WE’LL BE COMFORTABLE GOING FURTHER AFIELD TO TRY AND TAKE ADVANTAGE IF WE THINK THE REGULATORY AND REVENUE OPPORTUNITY IS RIGHT keeping a watching brief on the US, or are you concentrating on growth possibilities more locally? JH: We’ll never say never to an opportunity that presents itself to get the brand into international markets. But at the minute our focus is on building out the brand and the technology more locally. And when we think we’ve got a technology platform to go to war with, we’ll be comfortable going further afield to try and take advantage if we think the regulatory and revenue opportunity is right. SBC: And just finally, where can you make the quickest difference for
Superbet? What is your immediate focus? JH: The business has been very successful at building out its retail propositions, and then online propositions. But there’s still lots of headroom for growth in terms of rolling out the full product set and marketing those products. So the focus has been on completing some of the platform development work we have. And in 2020 going to market to promote the brand and the new products that we’ve built, as well as bedding down down the team and making sure we have the right people in place to support. •
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