Business of Betting - Ep 218 - Jamie Hart / Computer Technology

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hagrinBPR Review Date: 2024-08-01 08:04:57
Rating: 6.00

Notes:
Just skip the 1st 4 minutes. Holy mackerel.

6:35 - Some background before this, 1996 sports betting made legal in Australia (didn't know this). Posted lines on the internet, people would have to still call in, 1998 World Cup was really the tipping point of phone to internet betting. Was working with Mark Read (International All Sports / Sportsbet). (Just the wild, wild west.)

8:55 - Some GREAT history here - Early days of Will Hill (John Brown CEO days) person gets put in charge of the Internet division because he's the only one with an email address! First bet was 5 quid 8/1 on Man United and the bet would print out on A4 paper! Eventually turned off the printer because printing slips was costing so much money! (Incredible story!) 11:15 - No feeds so, say on Champions League days, put up the prices, go to the pub watch the games, come back and then hope you didn't drink too much to grade the slips (amazing).

16:30 - 2010, WH is running on OpenBet (like PaddyPower) but this limited some of the innovation. 18:15 - Mentions that he did Google Glass integration with the texting bet platform (that's a wild integration to have spent time on, but very cool). Jason brings up this point he's brought up a bunch recently about why did WH use turnkey software to run their main business vs owning their own tech. "The proposition is what's making us the money, not the tech." Interesting reply. "WH was an older brand, hard to be seen as innovating." Balance innovation with "trust" especially in the older days.

More UK regulation heavy hand talk that regulations are stifling innovation due to compliance costs. Hear it in basically every operator pod now.

31:20 - Jason mentions that his efforts are around "in-app" pricing sensitivity - i.e. if you make it easier for the person to know how much they are saving using Smarkets, the more they will care about price. Interesting thought, would like to see it live. Just not sure the normal person would still care unless there was an incredibly low hurdle to jump mentally and mechanically. (In the crypto world, there are these execution platforms that pool the liquidity of all the CEXs and just execute for you for a small fee at the best price. Something like that where depositing in this one place and utilizing their execution engine seems doable, but fees usually kill these products as well as the lack of API endpoints to place bets).

31:45 - Horse Racing Talk: 35:20 - High costs associated with operators booking horse racing, expensive feeds, additional taxes. 38:30 - "What new things can they try?" "They haven't really tried everything." 40:15 - Student Days - where they bring many kids to the track to and sell the "day out experience". Even in Hong Kong, industry hasn't really been growing, but it is still entertaining and a very successful charity, but there has been limited to no growth in recent years.