Hills Online MD talks hires, innovation and marketing pressures

William Hill announced a trio of senior appointments to its Online team earlier this month, completing a digital restructure ongoing since managing director, Crispin Nieober, took the reins last year.

Nieober’s strategy was simple: replace the company’s three separate innovation, product development and operations divisions, with a new P&L-focused structure. And according to the MD, the changes are already paying dividends following “massive progress” to its mobile sportsbook product.

EGR Intel spoke to Nieober to find out more about the restructure and how it will lead to more innovation from the operator in the future.

EGR Intel: Why did you decide to make this trio of senior hires?
Crispin Nieboer (CN): Last year, we made massive progress on our mobile sportsbook, drove forwards on cross-sell and made some positive early steps on gaming. These announcements are really about continuing that momentum and driving towards our ambition to be best-in-class for mobile product and customer experience. It’s really about continuing what we started in 2016.

EGR Intel: Are these the final pieces of your Online restructure?
CN: It does fill in what I see as the remaining gaps. People come and go all the time but these guys are coming into three key areas. We’re all about having non-stop improvement here, so we are not resting on our laurels, and the three areas I really want to drive ahead on are across marketing, gaming and technology.

EGR Intel: What was the thinking behind switching James Curwen from director of gaming P&L to a new product role?

CN: I want James to focus on ensuring we have the best-in-class products in gaming. He will be focusing on the product development side with regards to innovation and quickly bringing to market differentiated and exclusive gaming content. It doesn’t have to be just the games, it could also be the customer experience such as loyalty, bonusing, freeplay and other areas. James is extremely strong in this area and very passionate about it.

EGR Intel: Do you think the P&L structure you implemented is already paying off?

CN: What it has done is bring more commercial clarity to each of the divisions that have been given a P&L structure and meant people are much clearer on the financial impact of the various things they’re working on. Previously, when we had a pure functional set-up, it was quite hard to work that out and people could end up working on things for months or years without having a strong feel for the P&L impact and whether it is net positive or not.

EGR Intel: Are there any worries this could be altered again by the new CEO once he/she has been hired?

CN: I don’t see that happening. I’ve been given an appropriate amount of autonomy and I keep the board included to the right level, so I doubt any of these decisions will be unwound on the basis of who the permanent CEO might be.

EGR Intel: Can you provide any examples of how this new structure has led to any innovation?

CN: Our TV betting product on the mobile app, for example, has become a major driver of revenues. This was devised within the existing sports betting team, rather than by someone externally who sits somewhere else and is dreaming up wonderful things that people might want to use. Our search functionality is another example.

My experience is that if you have it separate from the core team, when the innovation team pass something over, it’s often not quite fit for purpose or ignores certain things. Whereas the closer you can have innovation to the actual core development and ops team, they are all aware of those things.

Nieboer says William Hill has made “massive progress” on mobile sportsbook in recent months

EGR Intel: Can you give any indication as to how much stronger mobile is performing?

CN: The product has clearly improved and we are seeing a good customer response. One of the underlying KPIs is that we are continuing to see very strong growth in our player quality and the wagering per customer. This is often an indicator that people are enjoying an improved product. We said amounts wagered had increased 4% in H2 following the mobile sportsbook enhancements and as we said in the recent statement, those positive trends have continued.

EGR Intel: And these improved metrics are predominantly down to an improved user experience?

CN: My vision is that we are focused on being the best in-class on mobile product and customer experience. Just think of what we’ve got out of the door last year post-Trafalgar, which was a huge engineering project but left a lot to do on the UX and CX side. We’ve enhanced the UX with features like scoreboards, bet suggestions, in-app messaging, search, language and improved cross-sell. All of that has definitely helped drive up the ARPU. The other side is less exciting and not a driver of headlines, but every month we continue to improve our technology on spotting bad customers as well, which obviously helps. So whether it was fraud or abuse, we are getting better and better at that.

EGR Intel: Have you been happy with the response to your new High 5 offer?

CN: That has gone down extremely well. What is nice about that offer is it is a genuine omni-channel promotion, available in-store, online and on mobile. You will also have seen that we are sponsoring ITV’s coverage of the horseracing, so it’s a nice product to lead with on that. It is a good joined-up, cross-media campaign and the response has been really encouraging.

EGR Intel: What did you make of bet365 pulling BOG+?

CN: I think it shows that bonusing has become extremely competitive and some of the offers out there on a ring-fenced basis don’t stack up. The question for everyone in the industry is to work out in their own way as part of a total package – customer experience, product and offers – whether the overall proposition really competes. They’ve obviously taken the view that that piece on its own is maybe stretching things too far and I think it is a response to what has been some quite aggressive bonusing in the market over the last 18 months. At some point I think you need to draw a line and say at some point “we’re not going with that”.

EGR Intel: And you feel like High 5 treads this line quite carefully?

CN: I think it does. The difference with High 5 is that it has the loyalty angle and something new. The problem with BOG is that when something is not new, inevitably it has less cut-through and becomes less of a driver for changing the customer behaviour. So High 5 is new, innovative, different and enables us to do something across retail and online in a very straightforward way.