Officials with one of the UK's leading bookmakers, William Hill, announced plans to step up its technology delivery by partnering with Enpocket to deliver time-sensitive betting odds and information to punters across the UK.
As part of the deal, Enpocket, a leading mobile marketing solutions provider, will license its widely popular Enpocket Engine to William Hill. With the addition of the Enpocket Engine, William Hill will launch a major campaign to build its mobile database.
The system was immediately put to use last week when William Hill used the Cheltenham Festival and the Cheltenham Gold Cup as the maiden voyage for the new system.
Posters in 1,500 UK-licensed betting offices gave sports fans the opportunity to text the keyword 'CHELT' to short code in order to receive the latest odds and news from the festival. Punters could also sign up for the service by using the William Hill Web site.
Officials with William Hill didn't want to comment on the success of the campaign until financial figures are released to investors in April.
Although Cheltenham was used to roll out the new service, the premier racing event for the jump season also meant high activity for hackers.
William Hill confirmed it was the target to a Dedicated Denial of Service attach (Ddos) for 24-hours during the festival, but security measures in place where able to keep the site up and running, according to the spokesperson.
"It was a pretty extensive attack," the spokesperson said. "We stayed up though and had to resort to some measures, including blocking punters from certain areas of the world, in order to keep it business as usual for the majority if our customers."
Like other online operators the William Hill attack was the work of extortionists, who threaten to take down a site in exchange for up front money. But the William Hill attack was slightly different.
"We didn't receive the extortion demand until after the attack," the spokesperson said. "We absolutely would not give in, and we've had no more attacks. We were able to operate at around 50 percent capacity."
By keeping the hacker attacks at bay, and the new agreement with Enpocket in place, William Hill is hoping to continue its 2003 success for the remainder of 2004.
Enpocket Insight will help William Hill build a detailed picture of its mobile customers base. Once profiles are established on the mobile users, tightly targeted information can be delivered to the punters, increasing the chances of response rates from the users.
Michael Grenham, Sports Information Controller for William Hill, said the agreement with Enpocket will increase the one-on-one marketing efforts between the bookmaker and its punters.
"Mobile messaging gives us the ability to deliver personalized data direct to our customers' handsets for events like the Cheltenham Gold Cup," he said.
In addition to sending the punters special promotional material, the ability to deliver real-time odds updates will likely spur more people to have a flutter, Grenham said.
"Speed of delivery and reliability are key to ensuring that our customers receive relevant updates on odds and time-sensitive information at the right time. This is why we have licensed the Enpocket Engine and are using Enpocket Insight to understand our customers' needs."
Only those customers that opt-in to the system will receive the targeted messages and promotional materials. Enpocket is hosting the application, building the mobile database and providing professional services that integrate the Enpocket Engine with William Hill's infrastructure.
Once sports fans have received odds to their mobiles they can then place a bet through the mobile Internet, over the phone or in-store. William Hill is already using the Enpocket Engine to give odds to football fans and with the completion of Cheltenham will expand the system to include racing, football, tennis, golf and rugby within the next quarter.