William Hill boosts tech capabilities with Grand Parade acquisition
Operator will pay £13.6m for the gaming technology firm as it looks to improve customer experience across all channels
William Hill has acquired gaming technology specialist Grand Parade in a major boost for the operator’s quest to deliver an improved front-end experience and enhance its internal development capabilities.
The £13.6m deal will see William Hill acquire the entirety of the Grand Parade business, which includes 200 creatives and developers based in London and Krakow.
Grand Parade was founded by CEO Andy Clerkson in 2007 and has deals in place with a number of William Hill’s rivals including Ladbrokes, Coral, Sky Bet, bwin and Betfair.
According to William Hill, the acquisition will enable the operator to improve the customer experience across all channels, particularly the firm’s online front-end âTrafalgar’ platform which launched last year.
Following the trasaction, Grand Parade non-exec chairman, and former Ladbrokes and Coral director, John O’Reilly has parted ways with the company.
“Grand Parade has an outstanding team of developers and is recognised throughout the industry for creativity and for developing market-leading user experience in the sports betting space,” William Hill group chief information officer, Kevin O’Connor, said.
“We see technology and innovation as key differentiators of our customer experience and the Grand Parade team will further strengthen William Hill’s existing capability in continually innovating across our desktop, mobile and retail platforms.”
Grande Parade’s current partnerships with operators has resulted in products such as Betfair Predicts, released in the run-up to last year’s UK General Election, as well as in-play solutions for Coral and Ladbrokes and the new FootballPools.com.
“GP [Grand Parade] has forged a formidable reputation in the digital sports betting and gaming world, and the acquisition reflects the high regards William Hill have placed on the creative and technical expertise we have provided our customers and will continue to do so in future,” Clerkson said.
“We have always been innovators, and now we are looking forward to delivering a continual flow of engaging products to William Hill customers across all platforms,” he added.
William Hill recently parted ways with its CEO James Henderson following the lacklustre performance of the operator’s digital business in recent months.
Today’s acquisition is designed to complement the investment made by Hills in NYX Gaming Group earlier this year which helped support the supplier’s £270m deal for OpenBet.
William Hill made an equity investment of £80m into NYX to partially fund the transaction, enabling the operator to secure a technology roadmap for a new back-end platform in partnership with OpenBet.
The operator’s share price was down 0.48% to 308.50p on the London Stock Exchange at the time of writing.