Q&A: Garry Knowles, managing director, Webis Holdings

The latest financial results from Webis Holdings, owner of the horse racing business WatchandWager and sportsbook betinternet.com, revealed the holding company was back in profit thanks to impressive growth from in-play betting. eGaming Review caught up with managing director Garry Knowles to find out how the firm plans to continue on its current growth trajectory.

eGaming Review (eGR): What are your views on the Asian market currently, particularly the evolving regulatory landscape?

Garry Knowles (GK): We’ve always been an Asian-focused business for historical reasons and we have a very strong brand, particularly in Singapore which is a country that from our understanding is likely to regulate or ban online gambling at some point.

We made a submission to the public consultation at the back end of last year and the response showed a varying viewpoints of how things should operate but the general consensus was that banning it was not a good idea. But in terms of a proper regulatory framework, it takes probably 18 months or two years to complete and I’m not quite sure it’s got the appetite to do that.

eGR: Do you have plans to enter new markets in Western Europe?

GK: It’s all pretty slow compared to what we get from Asia. The UK for us is about analysing the costs and benefits involved of going in, which is my project currently and the board will make a decision on whether we apply for a licence in the UK when the window opens.

We are now aware that we don’t just have to be licensed but that most of our partners will need to be as well. It’s actually going to be quite challenging and I think that because we are a small or medium sized company it will be even more difficult.

eGR: How important is in-play betting for betinternet.com and are you looking to add any more sports or markets?

GK: It’s around 70% of our turnover, largely because Asian customers generally like bets that get paid out quickly. We’ve increased the product and added more markets, particularly in football. Tennis has been very successful which we added about a year ago after the contract with IMG.

There are a few sports which haven’t got a good in-play offering so we’re going to beef those up. We’re very competitive considering where we’re at and the size of our competitors’ technical departments which are extremely lean. Our product is good and in some cases even better than the bookmakers which have far more resources than we do.

eGR: How are you approaching the World Cup?

GK: It’s clearly the biggest betting event in the world and there’s always a huge amount of money, much more so than the European Championships with the global betting pool of money. Four years ago the individual results were fantastic for bookmakers which was a key turning point in our business as it enabled us to start reinvesting in the systems and data feeds of our business.

We’re hopeful that there will be a good mix of results and we’re hoping the timings of the games will prove difficult for the European market because in Asia I’m pretty sure they never sleep.

eGR: How has the gaming part of the business been performing?

GK: We’ve added the whole suite of Microgaming’s Quickfire games to our site which have proved to be very popular and favoured them over some of our previous suppliers. Casino is not an area we thought would ever be greater than sports betting but it’s there as product that people can go and play.

We tend to find that our casino and games users play those games nearly exclusively and are not sports bettors. So cross-selling between customers wouldn’t be a marketing angle we’d go for in the World Cup, for example.

eGR: WatchandWager recently signed a deal with the Hong Kong Jockey Club. How did that partnership come about and do you have any similar deals in the pipeline?

GK: We were very happy to announce that as it’s been in the mix for some time and we are now the only global company to be offered the opportunity to bet into those markets. For us this is key for some of our B2B players in WatchandWager.

However, we’re also keen to grow our B2C business. We were granted a licence in California for our advanced deposit wagering at the end of last year and we’re now in the process of developing our marketing plan to pick up more customers.

We’ve actually seen a nice bit of growth on WatchandWager in the last few months and now we have that licence we are one of only five licensees in that market. It’s reasonably good margin and we’re also looking at other states when the regulation changes over the next year or so.