The 10 most influential online gambling people this decade: 7 & 8
Alun Bowden is back with two more entrants including pioneers of live data and marketing
8. Ken Robertson and Mícheál Nagle
Paddy Power
Reason: Social Mischief
A double header, but it would be wrong to ignore either. For those with short memories it’s hard to imagine an online gambling world before Paddy Power. They didn’t invent the idea of betting firms having a personality, a brand or a tone of voice, but they may as well have done when you consider the prosaic, almost instructional way firms communicated with their players before they came along.
You could say that in the old days betting firms dealt in gentle animosity, punters vs bookies and shaking their fists like an irritated neighbour in a children’s cartoon. Paddys just took things in a totally different direction, becoming the punter’s pal who liked to make fun of them and of everybody else. It was a bit laddish, a bit “banter culture” but almost always genuinely funny, creative and interesting.
Paddy Power taught the world how to talk to their customers and it continues to be the model used not just in the UK but all over the world. And two of the men who contributed to this were the so-called head of mischief Ken Robertson, and current head of social Mícheál Nagle who, we’re told, was one of the key figures in building up Paddys’ incredibly important social media profile, character and content. Robertson is the name everyone knows as the man behind a series of stunts that defined the brand and created huge media attention in the UK and Ireland such as Nicklas Bendtner’s pants at the Euros in 2012 or the giant Paddy Power sign at Cheltenham.
He helped define, for better or worse, the Paddy Power brand and spawned endless imitators not least in the UK market, none of whom ever quite got it right. But that didn’t, and still doesn’t, stop them trying. And that’s a marker of real influence. As for Nagle and the social team, it’s hard to find a UK-facing social account that doesn’t feel heavily influenced by Paddy Power. And its consistency and quality over the years is truly to be admired.
7. Hans Thomas Gross and Carsten Koerl
Runningball/betradar
Reason: And it’s live!
Yes it’s another double header but wind it in, it’s not your list.
Betting in this decade is synonymous with in-play, but that was far from the case at the start of the millennium. What changed all this was the availability and accuracy of data feeds on a mindboggling array of football leagues, and sports delivered directly to operators in a way they could push out to their customers hungry for more betting opportunities. And you could argue it all began with runningball.
The idea of using a network of scouts to collect data, that is then collated and sent to operators in real time sounds both barking mad and obvious in retrospect, but it completely changed the game. In-play betting became the lead product for some of the biggest names in the industry, not least bet365, and provided a huge boost to player values, product availability and the image of sports betting. This was now a product that looked and felt very different to retail.
Gross had already sold up and shipped out of the sector before the decade was even half done, offloading his company onto Perform for €120m in 2012 who took the ball (ahem) and ran with it. But alongside them tracking them and eventually outpacing them was the emerging Betradar operation, which truly took things to another level both in terms of scale and operator-friendly products and it would be wrong not to acknowledge the contribution of Carsten Koerl to this.
Carsten Koerl
Koerl is the founder and CEO of Sportradar and the driving force in building it from what was effectively a live-odds feed into the sprawling multi-media giant it is today, providing everything from live streaming to managed trading and pretty much every point in-between. They helped build up in-play betting to the huge business it is today and even now continue to try and push the industry forward alongside Genius Sports, whose own founder Mark Locke is also a name to note
In-play betting, streaming and live data feel like huge parts of the industry, but in truth they are only getting started and the influence of the originators will be felt through the next decade and beyond.