Kofi Annan, a former secretary general of the United Nations, once said that defying globalisation was like trying to defy gravity. In the sports betting world even those bookies embracing globalisation have occasionally come down to earth with a bump.
“Four years ago there was a great confidence among the Western [online betting] operators that they had something to offer the Asian market,” David Briggs, Chief Executive of Orchid Sports, told the BetMarkets Asia conference in Macau this week.
“They believed they were going to carve up Asia between them. There have been some painful and bitter experiences among those Western operators and many of them have retreated from the Asian market saying ‘We just can’t do it here—it’s too difficult and too painful’. Will the Asian operators think European punters are too difficult and I don’t like these European regulators?” said Mr Briggs.
“I’ve always felt there’s a space for somebody to be successful in both Europe and Asia,” he added.
“The challenge is to focus on what the customer actually wants and build a business model around that,” suggested Mr Briggs, a former managing director of the online division for Ladbrokes, the leading UK-founded bookmaker.
“Despite all the mission statements from [out of region] companies, when you actually look at their product, very rarely does it seem to offer a decent proposition to the consumers in each territory, compared to what they already have available,” he stated.
The BetMarkets conference, organised by Beacon Events and Clarion Gaming and held at Galaxy’s StarWorld Casino & Hotel, heard that when it comes to online sports betting, business traffic might indeed be moving West to East. That’s both in terms of offering Western punters familiar products such as so-called 1×2 sports betting at fixed odds, and via more exotic lines, such as in-play Asian handicap betting on soccer. Some of the Asian companies already have businesses and operating licences in Europe.
“There are Asian betting groups that are now prominent [soccer] shirt sponsors or team sponsors around the UK—such as Mansion [Tottenham Hotspur], and SBO [West Ham United],” said Mr Briggs.
“There are a series of smaller companies starting to promote themselves more actively in the UK. Licences are now being held by some of these Asian groups in the Isle of Man, and there are competitions going on in Malta and other jurisdictions,” he added.
A show of hands from a conference floor is never a scientific exercise or indeed a guarantee of future success, but the mainly Western delegates appeared to think by a narrow margin that Asian bookies stand to make good inroads into European markets in the next few years.
Asian handicap could appeal to market makers and punters alike because although it’s typically low margin and high volume, it offers value to players beyond the win, lose or draw format and allows bookmakers to lay trade risk.
“It’s very rare at the moment for Western bookmakers to trade the market and sell on a bet they don’t want,” Mr Briggs told the conference.
“In future they may move to a situation where they embrace that. Asian operators in turn may want to move from a situation where they will take a bet from anybody as long as they can sell it to someone else, to a situation where they look at where the bet is coming from, and whether they should be taking it or selling it on.”
