Hills to invest £30m in new global technology platform
Operator says three-year project with OpenBet will help increase market share in the UK and boost international revenues
William Hill will invest £30m over the next three years on the development of its new global platform for the entire group’s operations.
The London-listed operator will work alongside OpenBet to develop its “next-generation” platform, which it said will support its key objectives of increasing market share in the UK and expanding international revenues.
“This will enable us to improve the customer experience even further in the UK,” the operator said in its financial report this morning.
“It will also support lower cost entry into new markets and increase the Group’s efficiency by moving all divisions onto a single platform, enabling sharing of innovations in all markets.”
Interim CEO Philip Bowcock added: “It will make us more efficient because we won’t have to maintain multiple platforms across multiple territories.”
Bowcock also said the platform could be brought in-house if the firm wanted, despite the partnership with OpenBet, in which Hills owns a minority stake through a £90m investment in OpenBet parent group NYX last year.
The operator had previously unveiled plans to develop a new back-end platform in partnership with OpenBet at the time of NYX’s acquisition of the supplier.
Bowcock added: “It’s not a big bang, so some benefits will start to come through in 2018”.
Elsewhere, Hills hailed the impact of its proprietary front-end platform, which it said enabled rapid delivery of online product and user experience improvements.
“For the UK, we now have in place the major technology components we need to deliver our current product pipeline,” the firm said.
“Having benefited from the increased capacity added by the Grand Parade team, we are investing to further expand our product development team by increasing headcount in the coming months.”