Sportingbet plc took a major step in vying for a bigger share of the person-to-person betting market with the introduction of P2P service to its site last week.
The launch was the result of an agreement reached last month between the U.K.-based Internet site and TradingSports, a white-label P2P exchange.
Executives with Sportingbet aren't expecting high volume on the new service. The turnover will pick up, they feel, as more and more TradingSports licensees get online with the system.
The TradingSports concept allows operators to integrate P2P betting with very little risk. Licensees brand their own site with the service but layers and backers of bets come from the entire TradingSports roster of punters. Operators don't share data on customers, and the bettors have no idea about which site the other person's account is with.
Like most P2P sites, TradingSports' system allows for in-run betting during games ranging from American football, soccer, cricket and a host of other sports.
Sportingbet is branding its P2P section as "Sportingbet121" and is actively promoting it throughout its betting site.
TradingSports provided the back-end technology for the exchange while Sportingbet provides the customer base and marketing. The TradingSports Exchange builds links with gambling sites around the world, creating a central pool of P2P bettors.
Sportingbet Executive Vice Chairman Mark Blandford said his company had been following the P2P sector for the last year, but wasn't going to get into it until they had a viable tool to be effective.
Right now one site, Betfair.com, garners more than 90 percent of the turnover for the entire P2P sector. Betfair's success in large part is due to the high volume of registered users who frequent the site on a regular basis.
Although Blandford said Sportingbet has a healthy customer base, there is no guarantee those numbers will translate to high usage for P2P betting. The turnover created from P2P betting remains a very small overall percentage of the entire turnover from the betting industry. Sportingbet currently boasts more than half a million customers in some 150 countries worldwide.
With other high-profile sites like WWTS and SBG Global joining the TradingSports team, Blandford feels operators will be able to clear the biggest hurdle in creating a viable P2P platform relatively easily.
Nigel Payne, group chief executive of Sportingbet, said it was an easy decision for the company to go with TradingSports versus having to develop P2P software on its own.
"The TradingSports Exchange provides Sportingbet with a fast, low-cost entry into the person-to-person marketplace without the need to establish our own technology infrastructure," he said.
Although Sportingbet doesn't have the liquidity to run an effective P2P platform on its own, TradingSports does see the more than half a million Sportingbet users as a good proving ground for its system.
Joe Tighe, CEO of TradingSports, feels that with Sportingbet as the launching pad for its service, other top-notch operators will soon get on board.
"This agreement will enable us to showcase the TradingSports technology to a massive audience as we gear up for many more partnerships over the course of the year," he said. "We expect the addition of Sportingbet's vast customer base to bring a great increase in liquidity to sports fans betting through the exchange."