888 CEO “pleasantly surprised” by William Hill depth as post-acquisition plans take shape

888 CEO Itai Pazner has said he is “pleasantly surprised” by the strength and depth of UK bookmaker William Hill, following the online operator’s £2bn acquisition of the 87-year-old bookmaker. Pazner was speaking as part of 888’s H1 2022 financial earnings call, the first since the completion of the multi-billion-pound deal in April. “We have been pleasantly surprised by a few things,” Pazner told investors. “First of all, the talent that we’ve been exposed to in William Hill across the board in the business, the depth of the knowledge in all parts of the business online, specifically in retail, which is a new area for us, a very, very strong leadership team there and very strong position in the UK market. “We’ve identified both growth synergies and, obviously, the cost synergies that we’ve been working on for months. We’re very, very comfortable that we’ll manage to achieve them,” Pazner added. Lifting the lid on 888’s plans for the enlarged brand portfolio, Pazner confirmed 888 would conduct a review of all existing brands, taking the best performing brands in each operational area and investing in them while at the same time “rationalising” and reducing investment in lower performing brands. “This gives us an opportunity to put our resources behind the most successful brands with the highest potential for growth in each market, rather than investing in all brands and all markets,” Pazner explained. “We believe a big part of the potential growth of international is actually in sports betting. “Our brands all scored really well in igaming, and I think we’ll score even better as we integrate platforms and offer the 888-gaming experience across all the different markets.” Pazner continued: “However, the real big potential is in terms of sports betting, unifying the sports betting brand into one lead brand in each market. “Putting the best sports product and know-how behind that product and growing the business in our focus markets in sports betting has, I think, the biggest potential for growth in the future. “The brand choices are being made now and will be rationalised already in Q4 this year,” he added. Expanding on the potential for the UK, Pazner suggested 888 would utilise William Hill as its lead brand in the market due to its top three position in the UK as well as the fact that any attempts to make 888 Hill’s equal would be “extremely expensive” and require significant investment in branding. “Now that the group has William Hill, obviously, we don’t have to invest that kind of level in branding, but we can still grow 888sport on more of a performance basis,” Pazner said. “We feel we have a better way to grow sports betting in all of those markets, focusing the marketing investment and the product investments in our roadmap into a single brand in each of the markets, while keeping the other brands as secondary or tactical or removing them all together from the market,” he added. Outside of 888’s brand rationalisation plans, the other potential area of action for the business is the migration of all its many brands to one centralised proprietary technology platform. The first phase of the migration, encompassing a review of pre-existing technology, has already begun, with initial migrations set to take place over the remainder of 2022 and into 2023. Towards the end of 2023, a programme of phased migrations of 888/Hills brands will begin which will likely complete by the end of 2024, going into 2025, with the aim of achieving identified cost and growth synergies. “There are synergies in igaming, bringing 888’s best-in-class gaming products over to all of William Hill’s business, including 888 games, the games that we deliver to William Hill’s customer base both online and in retail,” Pazner told investors. “In terms of sports betting, there’s obviously taking all the capabilities that have been built in terms of trading and managing sports on William Hill and leveraging them also on 888. “We’re seeing a lot of synergies, and we’re uncovering more as the integration plans and the teams are working closely together. “There are more specific areas in terms of marketing, in terms of CRM, in terms of customer support; we’re basically finding areas of improvements and growth in almost every part of the business,” Pazner concluded.