Exclusive: BetBright brand shut down following 888 takeover 

The BetBright brand has been shut down following its acquisition by 888 yesterday, EGR can reveal.

The London-listed operator acquired BetBright’s assets for £15m, with a focus on the platform, which will ultimately be used to power 888Sport, and the trading/risk-management team.

However, the BetBright brand has since been shut down so the bookmaker’s tech and operations team can focus on the integration of the platform into 888’s.

The BetBright website was this morning updated with the message: “BetBright has ceased offering gambling services to its customers on a permanent basis.

“Customers will be able to access their accounts for a period of 30 days, in which we advise customers to withdraw the full balance form their account,” the statement read.

The operator’s revenues were not revealed yesterday, although the firm reported estimated revenues of €16m in 2017.

888 CEO Itai Pazner told EGR: “This is an asset deal, so the idea here is for the [BetBirght] team to start working as soon as possible on the integration so we can roll out faster and not focus on those operations but on the technology and integration and bringing 888Sport to the market on this platform.

“The integration is a project we expect to start rolling out sometime early in 2020,” he added. No exact timeline was given for the integration, with Pazner saying there was more planning to be done.

888’s existing sportsbook platform contract with Kambi expires in 2021.

When asked whether the BetBright platform would be used to target the US, Pazner played down short-term prospects, saying: “Owning our own platform gives us the ability to control our destiny in the US, but first and foremost its Europe where we have a sizable betting business already.

“It definitely works in both directions,” he added.

Julian Buhagiar, co-founder of RB Capital, also played down the impact of the deal on 888’s US ambitions, saying the technology is more likely to be used to “pick off lower hanging fruit” in Central and Eastern Europe.

Elsewhere, Pazner hailed the strength of the BetBright trading team and technology, saying it was strong enough for 888 to run its own risk management in the future.

“That was part of the rationale of the deal,” Pazner said. “We own our platform back end on sportsbook but the missing part was the front end and all the trading and risk management which we’re now acquiring as part of this deal.”