Inside Asian Gaming

March 2014 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 35 Insights a few states. So the government can’t tax it, and they’re looking to legalize it and get a cut. If that happens, US sports—and bettors who love betting on them and overseas sports—will come in, and that’s a US$300 billion a year market. You havementioned taking Priomha overseas from its Australian base as one change. How do you expect the company to look in five years? Yes, and there are a couple of reasons for that. One, Australia was always viewed as the place to trial the business; proof of concept, if you like. It’s also easier financially—it’s home. We’ve proved it works; we’re getting momentum and a track record and now looking to Asia, Europe and North America. It’ll be exactly what we’ve got now but replicated in other regions. We’ll have traders, analysts—who might specialize in one sport—and computer guys doing data. The computer guys may be in one area, but ideally we’ll have four offices and about 15-20 staff including subcontracted specialists. So it’s quite lean. Yes. Even hedge funds that have a billion dollars under management may only have five or six key trading or analysis people involved. Again, once the data’s gathered and the algorithms are written, the hardest part is over. A hundred-dollar trade takes the same effort as a million-dollar trade. “If sports betting is legalized in the US, US sports—and bettors who love betting on them and overseas sports—will come in, and that’s a US$300 billion a year market.” The value of online betting “One reason we’re looking to leave Australia is that in some ways it’s not a good place to be,” says Brendan Poots, founder and CEO of Priomha Capital. “When a game’s on, in-play trades have to be by phone—they can’t be done online. For example, in the 2013 FA Cup quarter final, Wigan played Everton at Everton. We bet againstWigan. Our strategy in general is that if a game is 0-0 after 30 minutes we’ll exit the trade if we’re not in the money, as it was that day. So we were watching and got on the phone to exit, then while we were repeating the spelling of our account name, Wigan scored. Markets tend to go crazy after a goal, so we said we’d call back in a few minutes—then Wigan scored three goals in two minutes, which is of course very unusual, but in this instance very costly. “If we could’ve pressed a button we would’ve exited with a small profit. As it was, we lost the whole stake. Even in New Zealand that wouldn’t have been a problem, Macau, the UK, they’re all good, but not in Australia. We don’t want those risks, especially as we get bigger.” Mr Poots in his Melbourne CBD office