MP visits LBO
Easington MP Grahame Morris has visited a William Hill LBO in his constituency, with the ABB’s Dirk Vennix. Morris commented: “It was great to visit my local betting shop again but not as a dog racing punter this time. I was interested to find out more about the range of service and activities provided and to see for myself which responsible procedures are in place to tackle under-age and problem gam- bling. I am particularly grateful to William Hill and ABB for their generous donation of £100 to the Retired Greyhound Trust.”
Betting an ‘added service’ for casino patrons
Casino operator Aspers may be the latest bookmaker on the block, but the firm has no great expectations for its new betting facility.
CASINO BETTING T
he country’s first casino under the 2005 Gambling Act, the 65,000 sq ft ‘Aspers at West- field’ in Stratford, is offer- ing betting to customers, but only as an added extra to its sports bar.
Operator Aspers is the first to be allowed to provide betting in its casino facilities, but does not intend to compete directly with the LBO market, instead it is offering its existing customer base a wider gambling portfolio. Mark Beattie, group elec- tronic gaming manager at Aspers, said the firm was trying to offer betting as an option for people who are attending the casino and watching sporting events. He explained: “The main point of the facility was to have a focal bar which oper- ated large screens and somewhere where we would be able to create an atmosphere and promote
social entertainment. Because we can offer betting we chose to imple- ment that facility too, but it was really supplementary to the fact that we have a sports bar. The bar wasn’t built on top of the betting; betting has actually fit into our plans for a bar.”
The bar contains eight self service betting termi- nals, provided by BGT, but Aspers did investigate offer- ing a full counter service at one point. Beattie com- mented: “The company did consider bringing in a major operator to run the area, but it was deemed to be unvi- able by the bookmakers rather than ourselves as these days quite a large pro- portion of revenue in LBOs is generated by gaming machines and we were already operating the slots. It was difficult for them to understand how they could make a profit from just a full counter service.”
BGT manages the sports- book for Apers, but the casino operator takes the liability. Beattie added: “The reason we chose BGT was that they were already in use on the high street in the UK and they would allow not only betting on sporting events but also on UK horseracing and grey- hound racing.”
This facility meant that on top of the main sports channels from Sky and ESPN, the sports bar also takes feeds from SIS and Turf TV. The bar, called Tanzibar, has a capacity of 300 and a 27 screens video wall to display all the sports as and when they happen. Beattie explained: “Sporting events have always been popular for casinos, especially boxing. We always get very large attendances when there is a boxing event on, mainly due to the timing of them as many of them are in the
THE ASPERS SPORTS BAR WITH ADDED SPORTSBETTING
small hours of the morning. “Betting is a service and an add on to what we do so our expectations in terms of revenue are quite low. We just wanted to offer the service to customers and it will be interesting to see what they generate and how popular they become, but we’re not expecting them
to be a major revenue gen- erator for us.”
While initial numbers for the Stratford casino have been far higher than expected since its grand opening at the start of December, the betting facil- ity has yet to take off. “It’s been slow so far,” Beattie commented. “It’s a facility
for people who are coming in for sporting events, so as we have more of these in the next four of five months we expect interest to pick up. We are not going after the LBO market specifi- cally. It’s more of a facility for people who are already going to the casino anyway.”
BettingBusinessInteractive • JANUARY 2012 19
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