Betfair poaches bwin.party exec
Betting exchange hires current bwin.party central marketing director Matt Robinson in the newly created role of emerging markets director - joins in September.
Betfair has poached bwin.party’s central marketing director Matt Robinson to become the exchange’s emerging markets director, a new role created for the experienced gaming executive.
Robinson, who has been at PartyGaming, now bwin.party, for two years and was previously at 888 for six years launching the brand in the UK, will join the exchange in September reporting to chief commercial officer Niall Wass, and follows the recent appointments of other gaming veterans including ex William Hill exec Ian Chuter, group operations director, also a newly created role, and Michael Bischoff, the exchange’s latest director of information services.
In a statement seen by eGaming Review due to be released later this morning, Betfair said Robinson’s role would focus on “providing direction across product management, marketing, brand management, sales and distribution in new territories.”
Commenting on the appointment Wass said: “The creation of this role is further testimony to Betfair’s international aspirations. Matt will play a vital role within the commercial function as we aim to position Betfair for entry into new countries and territories around the world.”
Betfair’s share price fell below 700p for the first time last Friday and has fallen by more than 50% since it floated on the London stock exchange last November. A number of unfavourable regulatory decisions in key European gaming markets including Greece and Germany, poor product performance including Betfair’s financial trading site LMAX and the departure of several senior executives including LMAX’s CEO, have seen the decade-old company’s stock suffer and forced its own chief executive, David Yu, to announce he is stepping down as soon as a replacement is found. Stephen Morana, Betfair CFO, ruled himself out of replacing Yu at the end of last month.
At the time of Chuter’s appointment analyst Ivor Jones of Numis issued a note saying his firm “[expects] a better-structured Betfair to result from his influence.”Jones added that “After headlines about senior-level departures from Betfair it is encouraging to see an excellent new hire.”
Robinson’s appointment will give the struggling firm a further lift with bwin.party said to be sorry to see the well respected marketing expert go.
“We are confident of making sure we maintain good continuity as regards to the [Matt’s] role. We always have a succession plan,” a spokesman for bwin.party told eGaming Review.
“We’re sorry to see Matt go, he’s very talented as well as a great person and we wish him well,” he added.
Following Yu’s departure it is thought Betfair will re-focus its strategy on its core exchange, fixed odds sports products, mobile as well as attempt to re-invigorate its marketing and online customer brand engagement. In mid June this year it appointed rival Paddy Power’s former advertising agency Big Al’s Creative Emporium (BACE) to work on new marketing campaigns, beginning its partnership with the creative agency with immediate effect.
Several senior sources within the industry have told eGaming Review Betfair is slowly moving away from being viewed internally as a technology business to being viewed as a gaming company.
The outgoing CEO told eGaming Review last month he was upbeat about the company’s future growth plans including integrating more fixed odds sports betting products into the exchange to provide its “very loyal” customers with a single source on which to bet on sports, rather than leaving the site and betting elsewhere.
“We think we have 72% of our customers’ current sports betting wallet. There is an opportunity to add in sports book-type markets around this. We know they are spending money elsewhere. Some customers have multiple accounts, and we want them to spend more with us. We’ve added other products over the years such as multiples and Tote betting, what we’re now going to do is add in fixed odds products around our core exchange and going to be integrating this together with the exchange.”
Yu said this would be done by the “back end of this year” suggesting Betfair would build most of this itself but adding that it had also lined up a number of unnamed third parties to help achieve this target date.
“So, overall we’ve fixed the internal issues and we’ve got a plan for growing the business, improving our margins and continuing to deliver to shareholders.”