SPOTLIGHT
SBC LEADERS ISSUE 32
CONTROL ALT DELETE SBC Leaders speaks to Evoke Chief Executive Officer PER WIDERSTRÖM and Chief Strategy Officer VAUGHAN LEWIS about one of the most challenging and transformational deals the industry has ever witnessed
Words by STEVE HOARE
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voke CEO Per Widerström is relentlessly on-message. I don’t count the number of times he says “value creation plan” during our interview but if I did it would surely be comical. This is all part of Widerström’s method. He needs to bang the Evoke drum incessantly as he looks to bring together two companies with very different cultures. It is two years since 888 acquired William Hill but only now are they beginning to look like one company. 888 and William Hill are legacy brands with real heritage but they have, Widerström admits, somewhat lost their way in recent years. Others are more trenchant in their criticism. In 888, they see a company that squandered 20-plus years of digital experience and market leadership to fall behind the likes of SkyBet and bet365, miss the gravy train in the US, and end up with no market-leading position anywhere in the world.
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Three years ago, it recruited a new chairman Lord Jon Mendelsohn and Chief Strategy Officer Vaughan Lewis to change that narrative and overhaul the direction of the company. Within months the opportunity to buy William Hill from Caesars Entertainment emerged. It was the transformation opportunity that 888 had craved since losing a bidding war with GVC Holdings for bwin. party in 2015. It was not even its first bid for William Hill — a joint bid with Rank Group stalled on the grid in 2016. This time round, 888 won Caesars’ auction but what followed was as traumatic a transformation as the industry has experienced. Furthermore, it was a transformation of the business so total that the personality and culture of 888, which was so strong for so long, has been almost entirely erased from the corporate picture.