William Hill software fault sees Oddshecker shake up

WILLIAM Hill’s sportsbook was hit by a technical fault last month that saw its share of traffic from top odds comparison site Oddschecker, which boasts more than 600,000 unique users a month, plummet to below those of rivals Ladbrokes, Stan James and Paddy Power, EGRmagazine.com can reveal exclusively.

Data seen only by eGaming Review reveal the impact of a software fault that meant Oddschecker was unable to ‘deep link’ to William Hill’s key markets throughout much of January, with the UK bookmaker’s share of traffic falling off by almost a fifth as a result, dropping almost two percentage points from 9.6% in December to 7.8% in January.

The fault helped mask the setback to racing-heavy Ladbrokes caused by the UK’s cold snap, which saw more half of January’s racing events abandoned and allow the William Hill arch-rival instead to climb to third from fourth place at William Hill’s expense, as well as allowing Stan James to climb to fourth and fifth place from fifth and sixth place in December’s Oddschecker rankings.

Oddschecker commercial manager Simon Miller said: “Although the month started with bad disruption, normal service has resumed in the last couple of weeks with Betfair rebuilding its market share and re-establishing a significant lead over Bet365 of 1.7%, an increase of 1.3% percentage points on last month. There was no particular area where Betfair excelled, just small improvements across the board.

“The big faller this month was William Hill, which lost 1.8 percentage points in market share and fell three positions. Although now corrected, last month Oddschecker temporarily lost the ability to deep link to William Hill markets harming the user experience. This serves as a timely reminder that navigation and ease to bet is a big influence when users decide who to bet with.”

The full list can be seen below.

January’s top 10 bookmakers on Oddschecker (share of referred traffic)

1) Betfair (14.2%)
2) Bet365 (12.5%)
3) Ladbrokes (9.5%)
4) Stan James (8.7%)
5) Paddy Power (8.5%)
6) William Hill (7.8%)
7) Sky Bet (6.1%)
8) Betfred (5.1%)
9) Coral (5.0%)
10) Sportingbet (4.5%)

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