Pulse
FSB Technology: Te satisfaction of working with young entrepreneurs
ONE THING LED TO ANOTHER
My Independence Day in the gambling industry was July 4, 1984 when I bought a betting shop. One thing led to another and before I knew it, we had become a small chain of five shops before selling them to a company that eventually became part of Coral. I then built up another small chain to the dizzy heights of six shops and then the Internet came along, or at least I became aware of it.
Long story short, we were the first UK bookie that went online and survived. At the time there was just one American company that was licensing technology – it was awful and didn’t work for European-style betting. Quite literally a betting shop owner/operator had to find a way of developing an interactive tech platform - it was a big challenge to say the least.
We started trading as the .com boom was dawning and listed on a junior trading facility called OFEX. We listed the company in 1999, raising £1.2m, £1.5m, and £7.5m in 12 months. It was easy to do and by this point we had technical people on board who scaled tech development whilst building the business through marketing and organic growth. We made a small acquisition with the funding before going onto AIM in January 2001 - one of the last. coms to get away before the .com crash.
We were bottom line profitable – circa a couple of million a year - and the company went from success to success. At one point, we became the largest market capitalised company on AIM. I left in January 2007 for a few reasons, namely the time conflict between me working full-time and managing investments using the cash I'd
INVESTING IN TECHNOLOGY MARK BLANDFORD
Mark Blandford, former Executive Director of Sportingbet turned serial venture capitalist, has vested interests across the gaming industry including with FSB Technology,
Gambling.com Group, and Gaming Realms. Speaking to G3, Mark expresses his satisfaction at working with young entrepreneurs, draws comparison between data and gold, and explains why Synalogik is a company to watch out for.
Mark Blandford Chairman FSB Technology
taken off the table by selling founder shares, my increasing interest in venture capitalism, and because the company was forced to down size from the American market when the US passed the UIGEA bill (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006), which prevented anybody operating in the States.
From 2007, I began my venture capitalism journey with a bias towards gaming that remains to this day. Of the 35 companies currently in the portfolio, seven or eight are in or around the industry. I'd include Synalogik in this category.
SYNALOGIK
I'm a shareholder at my local football club, Hereford FC, and Synalogik's Chief Executive, Gareth Mussell, is a season ticket holder. We didn't know one another personally, but he knew of my gaming connections through local publicity. He contacted me on LinkedIn and said he'd like to have a chat after being approached by what was then GVC (now Entain) and wanted
NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA P111
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