Exclusive: Ralph Topping interview Part One

I just knew from very early on, from when I started in management, that I was going to get the tough gigs,” Ralph Topping says ruefully.

Sitting in William Hill’s Wood Green offices in London, he has agreed to be interviewed by eGaming Review for the first time in the publication’s 10-year history.

His rise through the ranks at Hills ““ he will have been with the operator for 40 years in 2013 ““ has seen him drag the business into the modern era, reviving an ailing retail operation and moving it online through an industry-changing joint venture with Playtech.

He may be regarded as one of the most progressive and forward-thinking executives in the gambling sector, but Topping claims his various achievements are simply a result of him not being able to get out of the way in time: “The guys above me were better at body swerves than Maradona,” he says. “They seemed to miss all the hard gigs. So I got the internet, the shops, and all the changes in technology ““ all the hard stuff, which actually worked, though you don’t think so at the time because it was so nerve-wracking.”

This is typical of Topping; rather than take the credit for any of Hills’ major successes alone, discussing how he has achieved so much in his career, he is happy to share his secret: “Essentially, what you do is get a load of bright people working with you. I had a lot of really good guys working with me who deserve all the credit ““ I just had the nervous breakdowns,” he grins.

It’s no wonder that Jamie Hart, one of his most trusted lieutenants at Hills, says of his boss: “If he was leading you in 1917, you’d go over the top for Ralph when he blew his whistle, and there’s not that many people you’d say that about in business.”

The cupboard under the stairs

Topping was first tasked with setting up an online division in 1999. Why? Incredibly, this was because after having sent an email to his sister in Canada, he was the only senior member of staff at William Hill to have used the internet.

“It was at some point in the mid-nineties after a World Cup,” Topping explains.

“We’d put a service on the web where you sent in your money to place bets. It wasn’t a transactional website at all, and was basically just a list that appeared on the internet.

Still, they were pleased with the numbers, so they wanted someone to take it on full-time, so they tell me to go home and ask the wife. I thought it was only six months, so I said there was no need and accepted, but five years later I was still working on it.”

Topping immediately realised that he had to embrace a new mindset and that he would have to change the board’s view of online betting. Fired up, he approached his HR manager at the time. “I remember going to our HR guy and telling him that I didn’t have a clue how to set up [an online operation], but I did know that we had to get some smart guys who are already working on the internet, and bring them into the business. So the HR guy tells me, ‘That’s fine; I’ll put an advert in the Yorkshire Post’. Now that didn’t sound quite right to me.” Developing this shift in mindset and approach in other key Hills’ staff was not going to be easy.

“Eventually, we put some hooks out through online recruitment sites, and we ended up getting Bryan Kelly and Jamie Hart, who were already au fait with the internet, and are still with the business today,” Topping recalls.

Their ranks swelled by “a weird astrophysicist called Simon”, William Hill Online “began with this team of three in a cupboard in Leeds, and things grew from there”.

“For us, the biggest challenge was getting to milestones because we never knew where anything was going to take us, so in any project it was a case of reaching milestones, finding out the next one and so on. We always had turnover targets and it was ridiculous; I remember having massive celebrations when we hit a hundred grand, punching the air and thinking how fantastic we all were.

“Then I’d talk to [then-CEO] John Brown about it, and he’s telling me that a hundred grand’s no use to him, and that he wants a million. At this point you’re thinking ‘oh Jesus, here we go,’ but we hit a million around a year and a half later, two years after the start of the project.

“It was quite weird [when this happened]. I got taken to Las Vegas, and a show, which was John Brown’s way of opening your eyes to the world of gambling, before turning round and telling me that the next target was five million. They were good days,” he recalls fondly.

The Famous Five

The fact that Topping was even in a position to spearhead William Hill’s online charge has become something of industry legend. Having joined as a shop boy in the late sixties, he rose up the ranks to finally take his place in the hot-seat in 2008.

The truth, it transpires, is actually rather more intriguing. The son of a policeman, head boy of his school and a county-level basketball player, Topping describes his upbringing as “conventional ““ some might say too conventional”, before he headed to Glasgow to attend university, where, he admits, “the lifestyle was not what I was used to”.

“I needed money to enjoy that lifestyle, and my parents agreed that I should get a job, so I ended up getting a job as a Saturday boy at a bookmaker.” But this isn’t the start of the story ““ the journey which saw him rise to his current role officially began in 1973, when he returned from a spell in Europe, having dropped out of his degree course.

Returning to Glasgow in that year, he discovered it was too late to go back to university, applied for William Hill’s management trainee course and took charge of a shop in Hamilton.

“[The job] was fantastic ““ I really enjoyed it, and I really enjoyed the business,” Topping says, though it is clear that the decision to drop out has played on his mind ever since. “I may have enjoyed it, but that’s not to say that there were not some points when I wasn’t making the progress that I thought I should be making, when I didn’t regret not finishing my education.

“I always swore that when I got a second chance I would take it, and throw myself into it, and that’s the main driver in my make-up; I’ve got that Presbyterian attitude that I don’t want to fail. I looked upon it that I’d missed an opportunity, so I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity again,” he adds.

It was this desire to progress as far and as quickly as possible that led to what he describes as “an accident of history”, which saw Topping apply for a more senior role at Hills. A series of coincidences later, he was the company’s head of personnel for West London. Three weeks after that, he’d also taken on responsibility for the company’s workforce in Ireland, and remains possibly the only man in Scotland who has actually managed to gain more than he has lost to the football team he supports.

“The guy who was interviewing me for this job was a Hibs fan, so I walked into the interview and he asks me the question every Scotsman dreads: ‘What football team do you support?’,” says the current chairman of the Scottish Premier League.

“I decided to answer truthfully, and the team I used to watch when I was growing up was Hibs, so he asked me questions about ‘The Famous Five’ [Hibernian’s forward line of Gordon Smith, Bobby Johnstone, Lawrie Reilly, Eddie Turnbull and Willie Ormond, which led the club to the Scottish league title in 1948, 1951 and 1952], to check that I was authentic, and then questioned me about the stadium, getting to describe where I stood, and amazingly enough it was near where he used to stand.

“Then he tore up my application and told me that he’d find me something better ““ I didn’t really expect much, but three weeks later I was personnel manager for West London. I owe Hibernian Football Club quite a lot really; I’d hate to think where I’d be now if I’d supported Partick Thistle,” he smiles.

Read part two of eGR’s exclusive profile interview with Ralph Topping, CEO of William Hill, on this site and in the midday snapshot tomorrow.