Ladbrokes is one of the biggest names on the high street and it is now staking a bigger claim on the virtual estate. The company’s managing director of digital, Jim Mullen, tells iNTERGAMINGi how the rich data its new platforms provide is improving both the customer experience and the business.

Ladbrokes

SO important are digital betting and gaming services to traditional bookmakers now that the reputation of the whole company can turn on their success or otherwise.

For Ladbrokes, the rolling out of Playtech’s powerful Mobenga mobile platform, the casino package and the IMS back-office suite has, in the last year, been a turning point for the company. It had been coming under pressure from the markets to improve its position and decided that rather than simply acquire (expensively) an established rival, it would instead go down the organic route and build the business from within.

The implementation of the new platform was completed in April this year and in plenty of time for the all-important FIFA World Cup in Brazil. The man who has steered Ladbrokes through the switchover is Jim Mullen, the company’s managing director of digital.

“Mobile is the fastest growing segment in digital and we knew that we needed to accelerate our ability to compete,” says Mullen.

“We have a very strong relationship with Playtech and Mobenga is a market-leading product - I’ve used it before, when I was working for William Hill Online. We thought the opportunities it provided far outweighed other platforms and providers in the mobile market.”

The big selling point for the platform is a seamless experience across different channels for customers - and also for the operator.

“The platform gives us a single, cross-product, cross-customer view and access to back-office systems that allow us to manage both the customer experience and the products themselves. That lays the foundations for a far more competitive product set and we’re seeing the benefits coming through already.

“We are confident and encouraged by the results but of course it’s still early days and we’re not getting carried away.” The changeover was always going to have an important impact on the results from Ladbrokes’ digital streams - and in August the company duly posted a year-on-year drop in operating profit of more than 72 per cent for the first half. However as the system has bedded in, the underlying trends are solid, improving and proceeding as expected.

Net revenues for the digital sportsbook were up more than 15 per cent in the six-month period and betting on mobile services now accounts for more than half of the stakes placed digitally. In the second quarter, mobile bets more than doubled compared to Q1 and drove digital betting growth overall.

Read the full article in the latest issue of iNTERGAMINGi.