Sportingbet.com Plc yesterday became the first company to take bets via interactive television. The new service, part of a three-year deal, enables 1.6 million Telewest subscribers to place bets from their sofa with the click of their television remote by subscribing to Active Digital.
The Active Digital service, which launched in October 1999, currently has 156,000 Telewest subscribers. Telewest is a broadband cable communications operator offering pay television, telephone and Internet services in the U.K. and expects to have 2.1 million subscribers the end of next year.
Research from ABN/Amro estimates that the interactive television market will be valued at more than 1.4 billion pounds by 2004. Plus, Datamonitor suggests that 31 percent of the British population will have interactive television within the next six months.
Sportingbet will be one of four betting companies to provide Telewest cable subscribers with interactive betting facilities. William Hill, Blue Square and Ladbrokes have announced similar deals.
"Once again, Sportingbet.com has shown that despite the resources of our competitors, we are single minded about becoming the household name in new media bookmaking," said Mark Blandford, Sportingbet's managing director. "Our technical team are second to none and as a result of the platform that we have developed, the Sportingbet.com service has greater capability and functionality. We are very proud to become the world's first interactive site to take a bet and we look forward to providing customers with even greater service and innovation."
Sportingbet is based and licensed in Alderney, where it offers tax-free sports betting to punters worldwide. Blandford discussed the addition of the service, along with plans for WebTV and WAP betting services, during his presentation at the Second Annual Global Interactive Summit in Montreal last month. Prior to the Summit, Sportingbet acquired Costa Rican online sports betting company Betmaker.com.