TV ad campaign boosts SkyBet first half
SkyBet first half gross profits rise 35% driven by TV advertising campaign and growth in mobile.
SkyBet has seen its gross profits for the first six months of the year rise 35% driven mainly by 50,000 newly acquired players on the back of its latest television advertising campaign.
Richard Flint, CEO of SkyBet, told eGaming Review the numbers, announced by Jeremy Darroch, chief executive of parent company BSkyB during its results this morning, were “ahead of expectations” and that he hopes to break the £100m barrier for the full-year in six months time.
“The growth has been driven by sports betting on the back of our TV campaign and our work in mobile. The campaign has acquired more than 50,000 new players,” Flint told eGR adding that the return on investment from the TV work “pays within 12 months”.
SkyBet’s gross profits, excluding free bets, rose from £35m for the first six months of 2010 ending 31 December to £46m for the first half of last year, a 35% increase. This was the only number broken out during BSkyB’s presentation, with Flint adding that poker had risen by 20% both in player numbers and revenues.
The company rose 10 places in eGR’s most recent Power 50 list from 22nd to 12th with its sports betting and casino divisions experiencing a 49% and 26% uplift in revenues in the past year with active sports players increasing by 25%.
Mobile has been a great product for the newly Leeds-based company with a third of SkyBet’s sportsbook revenues now generated from the channel, up from 10% last year.
“Since August our mobile app has been the most downloaded gambling app in the UK. Also, our offer where customers can get money off their Sky bill by betting or playing with us has been a great success,” he added.
In an exclusive interview published in the latest issue of eGR Flint said that sports betting still has a huge amount of growth left. “While we know our customer very well and believe the experience is unmatched for leisure bettors, we will invest a higher proportion in product, technology and marketing to achieve our target. Website functionality is the key.
“We want more than 10% market share of Sky Sports online betting customers and the default brand that Sky Sports customers bet with to be SkyBet.”
The biggest riser has been its casino brand Sky Vegas with amounts wagered in the last financial year climbing by more than 40% in the last 12 months alone, however Flint’s principal goal is to double the operator’s current 6% market share of Sky Sports customers.
SkyBet is currently working on a new Beta version of its dot.com site and hopes to go live with the design in two months time, Flint said.