EGR Power 50 2024: 2. Bet365

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2. Bet365

Financials: While the top- and bottom-line performance shared with BDO must remain under wraps, the key numbers represented an impressive set of results to 30 June 2024.

Strategy & impact: A customer-focused obsession to detail when crafting and iterating one of the best sportsbooks out there; online gaming offering increasingly coming to the fore these days.

Geographic reach: Besides an unparallelled global footprint, headway is being made in the US. As a principal player in Brazil, bet365 is neatly poised to cash-in as this colossal grey market regulates.

Influence & leadership: The family-owned empire boasts the world’s most-recognised betting brand and has been transformational for Stoke-on-Trent as the city’s largest private sector employer.

‘Never Ordinary’ is the overriding message hammered home these days in bet365’s marketing materials and on the app’s loading screen. The succinct strapline could also easily sum up how this privately owned operator and in-play betting pioneer became a goliath of the industry with 100 million customers worldwide today. 

Indeed, bet365, which turns 25 next year after starting life in a portable building in a Stoke-on-Trent car park, has relied on one powerful, sports betting-focused brand rather than acquiring smaller operators to fast track its entry into new territories. While leading rivals have undergone transformative mergers and made bolt-on acquisitions, thereby creating bulging portfolios of brands, bet365 has resolutely remained an outlier.

In the summer, bet365 sought to further boost its brand presence with the release of its latest above-the-line TV and online ad campaign, in which audiences witness “freakish” sporting moments.

More significantly, it became the first-ever sports betting company to sponsor the UEFA Champions League. The landmark three-year deal means the bet365 logo periodically appears on pitch-side LED boards during matches. Becoming an official global partner of Europe’s elite football competition and the cachet associated with such a tie-up would have been an eye-watering outlay; a cost few operators could justify – or afford.

In terms of its home market, the UK, a report published by Barclays in September put bet365’s online sports betting market share in second spot at 18%. Yet its overall slice (including igaming) is considerably lower at 10%, due largely to slots and table games historically taking a back seat in the product offering. So, there’s certainly an under-exploited opportunity here, which could explain why the vertical feels far more conspicuous in the app of late.

Across the Atlantic, bet365 made a real statement of intent with the announcement of a new Denver HQ in September and an additional 1,000 roles. Now live in 11 US states – the most recent being Pennsylvania in July – bet365 consistently scores well in analyst firm Eilers & Krejcik Gaming’s (EKG) US sports betting app testing reports.

Bucking the trend of European firms throwing in the towel in the US, bet365 occupied third spot in Ohio based on handle for September, which was good for an 8% market share. It seems this sleeping giant has finally woken.

If you are lucky enough to be ranked a Power 50 operator, secure your place at the Power 50 Summit next April.