Glyn Williams is the commercial director of attheraces, the eagerly awaited betting consortium sponsored by Arena Leisure, BskyB and Channel 4. The betting site launched on Dec. 12 and features streaming video of horse races from 49 U.K. racecourses. Williams spoke with IGN this week about his goals for the betting site as well as broader issues in the interactive gaming industry, including U.S. laws, online payment solutions and the effects of the decrease in U.K. betting taxes.
IGN: How was the launch of attheraces and what has business been like so far?
Glyn Williams: The launch went very smoothly. We did extensive amounts of testing before we launched the site, and business has been very steady, particularly over the holiday period. You may not be aware, but the U.K. has been hit by a number of abandoned race meetings over the holiday period because of the weather--we've had very cold weather. But other than acts of God, the site has been going very well. Registrations are very positive, there's good activity on it, and bearing in mind that at the moment the Web site only has pari-mutuel betting on it, we don't have fixed
odds betting on it at this stage, but the video has been received quite positively. We know that video streaming depends to a major factor on how good your computer software sitting on your desk is or at home is, and we thought that might be a big issue to start with, but it hasn't. People are using the video quite consistently, so it's been quite good.
IGN: How many registered users are there?
GW:We don't have the figures or total numbers, but we're getting several hundred new users a day. We're certainly not giving out all the total figures at this stage. One of the reasons we're doing this is that the launch of the Web site is only a small part of what we intend to do in the next six months. We will be launching the digital TV platform in May; we have a phone betting system going live at that stage as well. So the Internet site is important because the back-end engine of the Internet site drives interactive TV and will be with the phone betting system as well. So it's an important development because it's the core technology. The Internet itself, as far as our business goes, is only one of our distribution channels. But we are very pleased with how it's gone and the reception it's got by the public so far.
IGN: What are your expectations for attheraces and has the site been meeting those expectations in the brief time it's been active?
GW: Our initial expectations have been met, but we're pretty critical of our work and think that we need to get fixed odds betting on it. We need to improve the archiving of the video. There's a constant, and if you're involved with interactive betting as I've been for a number of years, there's a constant process of improvement, and I'd say that the site at the moment is probably 75 to 80 percent as good as I think it could be. It could be better, and we're working every day to improve it and
will release new changes every month. So we think we've got a good start, but it's only a start, and we think there's a lot of things we need to do to make it better, and not just in the near future, but that'll be every year. This whole business is just becoming a lot smarter all the time.
IGN: If Internet gambling is made illegal in the United States once and for all, do you see that affecting sites operating out of England?
GW: At the moment, Internet sites are very individual on whether they take betting out of the United States. Some do and some don't. You really have to look at each one individually. We have taken the precaution, to get through our launch period, of not taking betting out of the United States. What we would intend to do in the future is take betting out of the Unites States when Internet betting is legal, and
that's increasing all the time. California passed an account wagering bill last year, which is a huge part of the American market, so I think it's more--people around the world are figuring out it's very hard to legislate out the Internet. It will be more impacted, I believe, by credit card companies than it will be by legislators in the long term. But we currently
won't be taking bets out of the United States. I would hope to take bets out of legal jurisdictions as soon as I can, and we will follow it rather closely, but we have to do business on a global market, and so we've got to be mindful of other people's jurisdictions.
IGN: How has the relaxation of betting taxes in England been for business?
GW: Well, it's put a lot of money into the pockets of punters here, of bettors on sport and racing, and certainly to the amount of money being bet--and this is anecdotal because I've just been talking to the other bookmakers in the U.K., and they said they've had very good increased interest in betting. So, I think it can only be positive in reducing the tax, and it will help England compete in an area where it has
been quite heavily handicapped in the past.
IGN: What do you think the key issues will be for the online gaming industry in 2002?
GW: The first key issue--just a simple one--is going to be online payment. How do you fund your account, how do you get your money back globally and how do you do that safely and how do you do it easily? I think that's the first key issue we're going to face. The second one I think is facing a lot of people now, is how do you turn traffic--how do you turn registration--into a revenue stream. Betting, I think, worldwide is finding it's very much part of the 80-20 rule. Of the 100 percent of the people who are logged on and registered and using the site, 20 percent are producing 80 percent of the revenue. So you have very small, valuable customer bases. You have larger, broad customer bases, but only a few of them are producing the value. I think that is an issue for online gaming in the future, and we'll all have to deal with it, but I think you'll see a number of marriages--a lot of online gaming companies will be looking to
back into other companies and try to improve the profitability. I think that will be a spotlight--people are willing to invest for a certain amount of time, but they want to see the revenue. It's going to be a hot topic.
IGN: Land-based and online bookmakers---do you see them competing with each other or furthering each other's goals?
GW: I suppose it relates to the last question, really. The land-based bookmakers--the big bookmakers were last, or slower than the new start-ups to get into online bookmaking, but they have finally gotten into it, and they're good at it, because they're good at the business. They have the structure and organization behind them as far as capital and funding go, that they will be winners in this market. So I would
think that some of these other bookmakers who are purely online bookmakers will find it difficult to compete, because the big bookmakers of the world, particularly in the U.K., can spend more money, can market more heavily, their margins are better, they have a large population of people shopping in stores . I would say the lion's share of the market will stay with land-based bookmakers.
IGN: Do you think betting on horse racing is becoming less or more popular, or staying the same in popularity?
GW: If you look at the U.K, it's reasonably static. The big growth in the U.K. is coming off other sports, like football and things like that. From a sports perspective, the large events, the Ascots and the classic events like the Breeders Cup in the States, give very good crowds and do very good business, but the standard bread-and-butter racing is static. The growth in the future for horseracing will be if it can
generate some sort of mass appeal through either greater distribution or simpler bet types. But at the moment I would say that horse racing and horse race betting, particularly, are pretty static in the U.K. I'm not sure about the U.S.--if anything the U.S. is probably dropping.
IGN: What about other parts
of the world, like Hong Kong?
GW: Football betting is having a significant impact on horse race betting in Hong Kong. I think the Hong Kong Jockey Club had a decline in its turnover in the last year. Certainly there are big football betting syndicates all through Asia now that are betting with bookmakers and are betting amongst themselves, that are having a big impact on horse race betting.
The thing that keeps horse racing--and horse race betting is still 70 percent of all betting done in the U.K.--I think why it maintains its hold worldwide is that it's so regular. You can have four horse race tracks running, running ten races each--you've got 40 races in an afternoon. It's very difficult to run 40 football matches in an afternoon. And so I think the frequency of it keeps it up there as a serious betting
sport, but it certainly needs to appeal to a younger audience. To a certain extent, I've always said that the serious horse race punter is dedicated but dying. They are a very good punter, they give us very good turnover, but they're getting older, and we need to introduce more people to the sport, and that's not just our role, it's the role of racing itself.