Inside Asian Gaming

March 2011 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 15 betting or even with the spread betting format popular in Europe. It also means much more complexity in bookmaking and potentially more risk for the bookmaker to manage. “European sports books are run by managing the customer,” says Tom Hall. “For example, if a punter is successful he might be cut down [by the bookmaker] from being able to bet a thousand, to only being able to bet 500 or even 200. In Asia, it’s run differently. All the bets come in and you just adjust the price. That means in Asia people can bet a lot more. In Asia, the maximum bet on an English Premier League [soccer] game is typically 50,000 euros at any one price. If you go to Ladbrokes you might be lucky to get 2,000 euros on. Asian operators also work on very fine margins.” Mr Hall, formerly a CEO of online casino softwareproviderPlaytech,isnowinvolvedin a company offering a software product that allows Western online betting companies to offer the right ‘in running’ sports gambling products to Asian customers and to expand their offer to gamblers in their core markets in Europe. “Sunplus is a turnkey sports book software provider,” he explains. “If you’re a casino or poker room [online] and you’re successful at that; these days you need to have sports, because that’s the most ‘sticky’ of all the gambling products. It’s entertainment as well as hard core gambling. People are always going to bet on their soccer team. “Sunplus is slightly different from a traditional sports book platform provider, where someone like Ladbrokes would come in and take an outside company’s software for an annual fee and use it to run their business. “If you’re a casino or poker room [online] and you want sports but you don’t want to go to the extent of hiring your own trading team and managing the bookmaking risk, then Sunplus offers that turnkey solution. Those licensing services from Sunplus have all their bets go into a central pool,” states Mr Hall, the company’s Business Development Director. Sunplus Critical Mass Quality and flexibility at the front end and the right expertise at the back end T he key to the Sunplus turnkey software system is that it is backed up by a critical mass of live sports events overseen by a back of house trading team big enough and skilled enough to manage the risk successfully and profitably. “Sunplus has a relationship with an exclusive service provider which has a team of 700 traders—one of the biggest sports book trading teams in the world. All the bets are managed by the centralised trading team,” says Mr Hall. “The trading teams operate like huge trading floors in a bank or stockbroker—but they’re trading sports as opposed to stocks.” Sunplus provides more than 5,000 live soccer events per month. Mr Hall says the biggest provider in Europe is bet365 with 1,500 live events. “If you’re a European operator trying to come toAsia, it’s virtually impossiblebecause the ‘Big Three’—IBCbet, Singbet/188 and SBO and most of the other [Asia-facing] books already offer so many in running games,” he states. “In terms of the betting volume handled by Sunplus; if you put Ladbrokes, William Hill and Betfair together, it wouldn’t come close. At peak there are 150,000 concurrent bettors. Our record was 160,000 concurrent bettors during the [soccer] World Cup. Sunplus is the biggest platform provider in Asia, and our ONEbook™ platform is used by brands including MANSION88, IBCbet, 12Bet and FUN88,” says Tom Hall. “So far European online sports books only compete on marketing. Whoever has the greater marketing spend comes out on top,” suggests Carlos Salas, Chief Executive Officer of Sunplus. “Now we’re saying you don’t have to spend all that money on marketing. You can improve your product and then also compete on the strength of that product.” Risk management—through an exclusive service provider, Sunplus has access to one of the biggest sports book trading teams in the world