William Hill sets out three-pronged growth strategy
Firm to grow presence in three international markets along with changes to product and marketing
William Hill has identified three key priorities, including international expansion, as part of the firm’s strategy to rejuvenate a flagging online performance which last week led to a surprise profit warning.
When addressing analysts following its trading update, the operator said it planned to significantly expand its presence in three international markets during the year and would reveal details on the unnamed territories at a later date.
The firm also said it would roll out its mobile offering in a greater number of languages after claiming its non-core markets business had been “held back” by only offering an English-language mobile product.
“Longer-term, the priority is to build our teams to support these markets, both from a product and marketing perspective and beyond this ensure we are increasing the number of languages we offer across both mobile web and iOS,” Crispin Nieboer, William Hill Online interim MD, said.
Last year revenues from William Hill’s non-core markets, which accounts for 12% of online net revenue, declined (gaming 30% and sports wagers 1%) year-on-year after it withdrew from a number of markets including Portugal and Poland.
Improvements to marketing was also identified as a means to boost the company’s online performance, with the three identified areas coming after CEO James Henderson last year hired former Playtech stalwart Aaron Johnston to review the business.
“Online’s performance has been a concern for me for a while and that’s why I brought in an industry expert to carry out a review,” Henderson said.
In addition to shifting William Hill’s marketing strategy from one of “volume to value”, Nieboer also said he had been working closely with the firm’s new CIO, Kevin O’Connor, to ensure the firm “gets better at making the right prioritisation calls” in technology.
As part of the operator’s focus on its product capabilities, William Hill recently brought in two external agencies to help the firm benchmark against its competitors, and is also currently in the process of quadrupling the size of its UX team.
“The big picture, [Project] Trafalgar was the right thing to do [but] the teams needs to be bigger to take advantage of that opportunity in both the UK and the rest of the world,” Nieboer added.