British mobile phone company Orange and ukbetting.com launched a fixed-odds sports wagering service available to Orange customers today.
The service is open to ukbetting account holders, who will be able to bet via their Orange mobiles by visiting the "racing" menu, which is under the "sport" menu on the Orange WAP portal.
Miles Pearce, Orange's sports multi media manager, said ukbetting developed a microsite specifically so Orange customers could register for the service.
"We're also asking ukbetting to develop a telephone line so that you can register via the telephone to keep it as mobile as possible," Pearce said.
Bettors will be billed and paid winnings through their ukbetting Internet accounts. All WAP betting transactions will take place over the Internet, so as not to compromise the security of the wireless network, Pearce said.
Mobile betting could bring as many as several thousand customers during the next few months, said David Annat, the managing director of sportinglife.com, a sports content and betting site owned by ukbetting. Annat said he hesitated to put an exact number on the potential new subscribers.
"It's difficult--we've not put firm numbers on it at all because it's a relatively new concept even in the U.K.," he said. "What we know is that 2.5 million people have access to a WAP phone, so it is a massive market of subscribers, but how many of them will convert, we'll have to wait and see."
The service was launched Thursday, just in time for the Grand National horse racing event. Betting on other sports will be introduced in time for other major tournaments like the World Cup and Wimbledon. Annat said by the time the World Cup begins May 29, there should be a full range of sports available on which to bet.
"We're just starting with racing so everybody gets used to it and we get it thoroughly tested and feel happy with everything," he said.
ukbetting WAP-enabled its betting systems in January and February, which is also when it indicated to mobile providers that it was looking to make an alliance to offer betting via cell phones. Annat said the company had been considering going mobile for some time but was waiting for the right partner.
"I think Orange is the best partnership we could have possibly achieved," he said. "The other side to it is we run sportinglife.com, which is a sports content and betting site, and we broke the million-customer barrier last month, so we've got a huge customer base of sportinglife customers, many of whom will be interested in betting through phones as well. It's quite exciting."
Orange had more than 12.4 million mobile customers in the United Kingdom as of December 2001. It also has more than 17.8 million users in France and 39.3 million controlled customers worldwide. In August of 2000 it was acquired by France Telecom, which lead to the creation of the world's second-largest mobile operator.