8.30 on a Wednesday night. It’s all relative but our average bet stacks up – it’s £1,200 not £20. It’s the proof of the pudding that you can get a bet on.”


Haddrell agrees. “We’ve got some decent hedging accounts and people who are having five figure bets on the big races – and that’s ultimately the kind of business we want to be laying. “We had some hedging accounts in Goring but we’ve taken on a lot more hedging business in the last nine months. We’ve specifically targeted our marketing towards that. A lot of people do find it difficult to hedge; it’s hard to move a lot of business through bookmakers nowadays, especially on quiet afternoons with moderate racing. “We can’t always guarantee


best price but we’ll always give a fair price.” The phrase “best price guaranteed” is anathema to Luke. “We’re not ‘best price guaranteed’ – ‘best price guaranteed’ is only available to losing punters who have less than 20 quid on,” he reckons. “We provide a service


whereby if you want to have a chunk on a horse, you can. No one else seems to provide that. We don’t go out of our way to give ‘best odds guaranteed’ or money back if your horse falls. We’re not about giving offers in order to get new clients – we want to take care of the ones we’ve got and network in the right areas to get people like that. “We’ve got a nice spread


Office manager David


Sports’ business is on British horse racing, which may have contributed to the earlier assumption that horse racing was their sole form of trade. But they’ve taken plenty on the World Cup plus all manner of diverse spheres. Says Luke: “We’ve laid bets on bowls; someone had £15,000 on a yacht in the Sydney to Hobart race; another had £200,000 on Conservatives in the General Election – dead-heat rules didn’t apply!” Adds David: “We take quite a bit on baseball and American football. We take in-running to small bets. With the internet I don’t think you need to run scared of in-running these days. “We’re open from 9.00am to 10.00pm and we find that pretty much covers everything. But a couple of our bigger punters have our mobile numbers, so if they did want a bet out of hours, we are contactable. “Over 200 individual clients


across the board of people that have a £10 Lucky 15 and people that have £20,000 at 5- 2, but no matter who they are they all get treated the same. They’re all on first name terms and they all get looked after.” David concurs: “We try to


keep it on friendly, personal terms. When clients come on, we know who they are and what they’re about. We know the punters that like to have 10-grand on the favourite, those who like a grand each- way, and those who might get some live information in the morning. It’s a good team atmosphere in the office – we all know the punters and we all communicate so we know what’s going on.” The vast majority of Star


visit www.bosmag.co.uk


played Royal Ascot week. The average stake was £1,800 and we turned over £3 million. Mikhail Glinka (in the Queen’s Vase) cost us a fortune but we still ended up winning on the week, though I suspect a lot of that was helped by football business.” Meanwhile, Ben, along with colleague Gary Woodgate, was betting on course from Ascot’s number five pitch on the front row. “We had a box there too,” says Ben. “It was great for the image and for networking, meeting clients we’d never met before, and we got loads out of it in terms of PR. However, the cash business was terrible – the average non-trade bet was a tenner!” It’s been two and a half years since Ben offloaded the last of what was once a six shop chain. “It was an expensive learning curve,” he admits, “but that’s all the past, whereas business now – we’re turning over £3 million a week, and that’s a lot of money. “Everybody keeps asking


‘what’s your next move?’ I don’t want to change; the system works: get punter, beat punter, get paid by punter, keep punter. That’s it, four steps.


Paddy Power installs flexible gantry


AS THE PRICE of large format screens tumbles, fuelled through technological advance and lively competition between manufacturers, this is a great time for you to benefit from the latest betting screen technology. And at Paddy Power, where a quiet revolution is taking place, they have already taken advantage of it in their UK shops. Large 46 inch HD screens with multiple split screen images are replacing traditional TV gantries. In recent weeks Paddy Power


and scheduling functionality inherent in MRG’s solutions, means that a variety of display alternatives can be switched seamlessly to suit requirements. Where live TV is part of the


have installed seven dual Multi- Screen systems in Ireland and twenty six single Multi-Screen systems in their UK shops, all supplied by MRG Systems. Each screen has six split images displaying results and sports data markets which replace the traditional gantry screens that would otherwise have been mounted. There is also an enhanced


version of this system called the Flexible Gantry where flexibility comes in many guises. The arrangement of multiple screen images on a single large screen can be almost any number. The 16:9 widescreen format lends itself to multiples of six and eight. Naturally, as the multiple increases each individual screen representation reduces in size in direct correlation to the overall screen size. The bigger the LCD panel the bigger the comparative screen displays. The Flexible Gantry system


display, an area is designated which may equate to four of the twelve screen spaces. Just prior to the event going off, the display can be expanded to occupy more of the screens’ real estate. This might be two thirds or full screen (aspect ratio defines the available area). At the end of the event the screen image shrinks back to occupy its original space. Another great advantage


is that event pages can now occupy more than one screen space. Events with a large field of runners can be displayed on a double height screen space, making a vertical scroll unnecessary. As a result, customers are now able to view all the runners and riders at a glance. With ‘dead screen time’ (a set duration of inactivity between events) a predefined display of marketing pages can be designed to occupy more than a single space on screen.


Flexible Gantry allows for even more dynamic marketing to be created that includes vertical and horizontal banners for display around selected events and messages tailored to the flux in changing markets. Whilst the early adopters of


Don’t try and complicate it, just keep doing it.”n


now offers its users a powerful new tool. That is, an ability to alter the number of screens being displayed. A single command converts the chosen default; say six screen images to any of the pre-set alternatives, eight, twelve, sixteen etc. For instance, more markets may be required or alternatively a highly focused display of the markets covering a particular event, ie. World Cup, Ascot etc. This feature, in conjunction with the advanced automation


this technology are presently the multiples, expect small independents to adopt the cheaper Multi-Screen or Flexible Gantry options in preference to a more complex gantry of screens in the near future.n


Contact 01453 751871 or email


sales@mrgsystems.co.uk to arrange a demonstration.


BOS Magazine July/August 2010 17 The


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