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20 B 2 B Sportsbook Australian relaunch


Sportsbet, Paddy Power’s Aus- tralian-focused online betting website, has successfully re- launched its Sportsbet and IASbet sites using OpenBet’s sports- book software. Sportsbet will have access to all the standard platform benefits including the centralised OpenBet Account giv- ing a single view of every cus- tomer and their betting activity across multiple channels.


Mobile deal


Betfair is the latest OpenBet customer to use its B2B back-end platform to manage its mobile sports-betting capabilities. Head of mobile product Richard Hewitt said: “Betfair pio- neered betting on mobile devices and, as the channel becomes more sophisticated, we are confi- dent we have an engaging and user-friendly offering that will ap- peal to our players.”


Cayetano partnership


OpenBet can now offer more games thanks to a new deal with specialist online casino game developer Cayetano Gaming. The partnership will allow many of the UK’s top on- line gaming operators currently using the OpenBet platform to offer Cayetano’s innovative suite of casino games to their players.


Anti-fraud


Experian’s identity and fraud tools are also to be integrated into the OpenBet platform, enabling operators to quickly and easily ac- cess Experian’s services to check identities and payment details in real-time. OpenBet chief executive of David Loveday commented: “Managing identity validation and fraud risk are important chal- lenges for our customers.”


FINANCIAL SPREADS


WorldSpreads on the hunt for more partners


BettingBusinessInteractive • AUGUST 2011


CONOR FOLEY: ‘WE HAVE ENHANCED OUR PARTNERSHIP OFFERING’


inancial spread betting firm WorldSpreadshas said that its white label deals are pushing the boundaries geographically for the firm which has spent considerable time rebuilding and repositioning itself re- cently.


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CEO Conor Foley stated: “Our partner- ship model continues to grow strongly and is greatly aided in its business development and delivery by our IT team in Kuala Lumpur. New partners have been added to the plat- form; under-performing partners have been terminated and there is a very strong pipeline of new co-operation opportunities in the UK, Europe and the Far East.” He added: “Enhancements are continual- ly being made to our proprietary IT platform, XEQT, and new products are in the planning stages for delivery to our clients during this calendar year. As consistently stated over the last 12 months, we have operated over this period at an almost break-even level, re- flecting the investment in resources, mar- keting and overseas start-ups. However, the underlying activity levels and ‘run rates’


Spread betting firm WorldSpreads has revamped its white label and partnership model as it looks to extend its reach globally.


were very encouraging: Trading profits, ex- cluding IT revenues, were up 25 per cent on the prior year; over 4,500 new clients opened accounts in the year; average daily trade numbers were up 56 per cent on the previ- ous year; and expansion in our existing and carefully selected, new overseas markets continued.”


The comments were made as World-


Spreads announced its annual results which saw an operating loss from continuing oper- ations before stock option compensation 640,000 euro (£0.56m) which was attributed to the increased infrastructure and market- ing investment made during the year, which was up 455 per cent to 3.22m euro (£2.83m). However, the growth in the company’s fi- nancial spread betting division continued over the course of the year. Financial spread betting revenues grew to 16.1m euro (£14.12m) for the year to 31 March 2011, an


increase of 25 per cent. This growth was ex- perienced across all geographic regions with growth in the company’s more prof- itable international regions slightly ahead of the mean at 30 per cent. The international di- vision’s revenues for the year increased to 6.3m euro (£5.5m) in the year to 31 March 2011. The growth levels experienced in Spain, Greece and Hungary were described as ‘particularly pleasing’. Commenting on the results, Foley said that the figures demonstrated a ‘continu- ing strong performance in our core busi- ness areas’. “As we highlighted through- out the year, the period under review has been characterised by significant invest- ment in systems, new key management and international expansion. This, com- bined with an aggressive advertising and brand building campaign in the UK market, is, in the board’s view, achieving the


group’s target objectives. “We are reinforcing our position in the competitive UK retail market for financial spread betting; our international operations have been expanded and the growth in the volume of business that this strategy was targeting is now emerging. The develop- ment of advanced risk management con- trols in relation to trading, exposure man- agement and, at a macro level, in respect of the performance required of our business units, has played a major role in improving the quality of our income streams and in the firm's ability to react rapidly to changing en- vironments in both the domestic and inter- national markets.”


Foley added that it has some more white label deals coming up this year: “The com- pany continues to seek out new partnership opportunities as a successful channel for expanding the business. We have enhanced our partnership offering over the course of the last year and we have a number of excit- ing potential partnerships in the pipeline which should, when launched, contribute meaningfully to the business.”


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