Q&A: Deutsche Sportwetten MD Jochen Weiner

Amid all the confusion and ongoing legal wrangling surrounding the German sports betting licensing procedure, a newcomer to the market has emerged in the shape of the Deutsche Telekom-backed Tipp3, which launched in April.

After just two weeks in the market, eGaming Review caught up with managing director of Deutsche Sportwetten and vice president of gambling and lotteries at Deutsche Telekom, Jochen Weiner, to find out a little more about how it plans to market the product and why it felt it could wait no longer to launch.

eGaming Review (eGR): Why did Deutsche Telekom decide to set up a joint venture? And why with Österreichische Sportwetten?

Jochen Weiner (JW): Deutsche Telekom’s strategy is to work with partners who have a lot of experience when we launch new entertainment services. We were looking into different potential partners and in the end the decision was mainly made to partner with Österreichische Sportwetten because we have the same idea of how we want to offer a sports betting service – with a very high focus on responsible gaming and with a high focus on security.

We also want to have a very simple and transparent product that is easy to use for customers and Tipp3 absolutely shares the same beliefs. When you look into the roots of Österreichische Sportwetten they are part of the Casinos Austria Group and follow very high standards in terms of responsible gaming and integrity of sports. This is something that was the main decision-driver – we want to have a product that is very secure for the customer.

eGR: How does the joint venture work in terms of the day-to-day running?

JW: We have basically split the responsibilities to facilitate the know-how that both sides bring to the table and Österreichische Sportwetten has more than 14 years of experience in offering sports betting in the Austrian market, which is one of the most competitive. They have processed more than 140 million bets so they are looking after the product, the betting operation and the risk management. All these parts of the business are run by them.

With Deutsche Telekom, our side has a focus on the German market, on marketing, and we are utilising the strengths that Deutsche Telekom brings to the table. Deutsche Telekom is running the biggest online portal in Germany which has the most traffic and that is obviously something that we want to utilise.

eGR: How do you plan to market the product? Will you approach a major football club in Germany like many other betting companies have?

JW: We are currently not involved with a club. We have just launched, the product has been live for two weeks now and it is almost the end of the season in Germany. Plus we don’t have a big event like a World Cup or European Cup this year but we wanted the product out there and focus the marketing on using the assets we have already.

We are currently looking into defining a new marketing strategy for the next season, but we are not with any Bundesliga team. We have to decide in the next couple of weeks how we are going to change the marketing in the new season.

eGR: Why did you decide to use the tipp3.de brand and not leverage the reputation of Deutsche Telekom?

JW: We looked into the brand and decided to go with tipp3.de because this was already known within the sports betting community in Germany. It was also already connected to Deutsche Telekom due to a sponsorship that colleagues from Austria did for the last six years with the soccer league in Austria – they had the naming rights and the soccer league in Austria was named “tipp3-Bundesliga powered by T-Mobile” and in Germany you can bet on these events so the brand name was out there in the community.

Also we wanted to have a sports betting brand and not a telecom brand that is very well known and very trusted in the core business of Deutsche Telekom but not known as a betting operator. It was much easier [for us] to utilise the existing brand.

The full extract of this interview is available here