Against the odds: what is the lasting impact of GVC’s exit from oddschecker?

For any price-sensitive sports bettor, the oddschecker grid has long been a first port of call when shopping for best odds and identifying which selections are being backed and which are drifting. In fact, Hammersmith-based oddschecker receives almost three million unique visitors a month, while an average of 450 price changes are processed per second. Meanwhile, the wider business – Flutter-owned oddschecker Global Media (OGM) – is a true giant of the gambling affiliate world, occupying seventh spot in the EGR Power Affiliates rankings for 2020. It’s all a far cry from when the oddschecker desktop portal flickered into life when first launched from a back bedroom in 1999 by its three founders.

So, when GVC announced last month that the FTSE 100 operator was pulling three of its digital brands – Ladbrokes, Coral and Betdaq – from the grid, the move caused quite a stir in industry circles and gambling Twittersphere went into overdrive. In fact, the news story on the EGR Intel website easily garnered the most page visits of any article in July.

Sure enough, on 9 July, all three logos vanished from the grid, although GVC’s other brand, Sportingbet, remained as it has a separate commercial agreement with oddschecker. In a statement entitled “GVC calls time on affiliate deal with oddschecker for UK digital brands”, GVC revealed the decision to leave oddschecker was down to “commercial reasons” and that both sides couldn’t agree terms to renew their deal.

OGM CEO Toby Bentall responded with his own statement in which he left the door open for GVC’s possible return, although he described it as “disappointing” to no longer be working with the three brands. However, the fact that GVC felt the need to go public with its decision to leave was in itself a curious move. “The very public nature of it is incredibly unusual,” insists Tony Plaskow, who co-founded Easyodds two decades ago.

“You’ve got someone saying in public ‘You’re charging me too much and it’s not working’ and the other saying ‘We’d love to see you back’. From an outsider looking in, that perspective was fascinating but it’s the ongoing battle that happens between any affiliate and a bookie.”

While GVC cited commercial reasons, the fact oddschecker is now owned by multi-brand behemoth Flutter Entertainment following its £10bn mega-merger with The Stars Group (Stars bought Sky Betting & Gaming, owner of OGM, in 2018) could have also influenced the decision. GVC is in effect paying its biggest rival to appear on the grid alongside Flutter’s Paddy Power, Betfair and Sky Bet brands and for customers oddschecker sends its way via Ladbrokes, Coral and Betdaq. Another factor is the information oddschecker collects.

“GVC would be concerned about the data that oddschecker gets given – not just pricing, but also acquisition trends and retention offers,” says a former oddschecker employee. “As much as oddschecker say they operate independently within the group, obviously the people in oddschecker do chat to the people at Paddy Power and Betfair and Sky Bet.”

Grid reference

For new bookmakers or those trying to crack the uber-competitive UK market, securing a slot on the grid has long been seen as a statement of intent. Marathonbet, a bookmaker particularly well known on the continent and in Russia, occupied until recently a prominent position fifth from the left, between William Hill and Betfair (sportsbook). With low-margin specialist Marathonbet being the best-priced bookmaker for 34 of the 38 rounds of the Premier League throughout the 2018-19 season, it made perfect sense to be on the grid. Indeed, the operator’s marketing messaging was very much centred around ‘Better Odds Mean Bigger Winnings’.

Yet the operator’s head of global marketing up until June 2020, Sam Behar, took the bold decision to remove Marathonbet from the grid six months ago. He tells EGR Intel: “When you look at the amount of money we were spending with oddschecker, it made more sense to invest those funds in a more traditional DR [direct response] channel. Marathonbet didn’t warrant that level of investment. It wasn’t a big enough brand in the UK but it’s a very big brand globally, and so I made the call to come off and we came off mid-February.”

Behar adds: “Oddschecker is a behemoth and the number one brand in the UK, so I was really surprised to see GVC pull out. I was surprised to see a brand like that who wants big cut-through and who wants to maintain a presence for the UK audience come off something that I think warrants an investment. It’s a shame for our industry to have big brands like Coral and Ladbrokes not on the grid. If they were assessing it on a performance basis, they shouldn’t have been in my opinion; they should have assessed it on the wider benefits that oddschecker can provide their business.”

Despite this, it seems GVC didn’t feel the wider benefits of being featured on the leading odds comparison site and the UK’s biggest sports betting affiliate outweighed the costs involved. As well as CPAs and rev-share arrangements, oddschecker charges bookmakers an undisclosed monthly fee depending primarily on their position on the grid, with the left-hand side (on desktop) the more expensive real estate. Prior to their departures, Ladbrokes and Coral were positioned fourth and 10th, with Betdaq in the second berth reserved for betting exchanges.

Ladbrokes and Coral aren’t what you would deem to be price-driven bookmaking brands, and so it could be that oddschecker wasn’t a profitable source of new players. However, Ladbrokes, which secured its highest ever click share ranking on oddschecker in May, walked away from the affiliate almost 10 years ago, only to make a return soon after. It’s perfectly feasible that GVC could perform a similar volte-face, perhaps with a deal more beneficial to GVC, but would the operator want to be seen to back down and return to the grid?

Take your pick

The departure of Ladbrokes, Coral and Betdaq means the grid has become noticeably narrower to any regular visitor. Ten years ago, there were 18 bookmaker logos featured, including brands no longer around today in the UK (Blue Square, Stan James, bodog and Eurosport), and four exchanges. This time last year, the grid had expanded to accommodate 24 bookmakers and four exchanges, however at the time of writing the number of bookmakers has fallen back to 19, alongside just two exchanges (Betfair and Smarkets).

The exit of Ladbrokes, Coral, Betdaq and Marathonbet obviously means four brands were erased. The disappearance of Blacktype, RedZone, Bethard, MoPlay, Royal Panda and Matchbook was down to a variety of reasons and nothing to do with any of them wishing to part ways with oddschecker. For instance, Bethard exited the UK market altogether, MoPlay’s parent company went into liquidation, and Matchbook had its licence suspended in the UK. Tier-two brands VBet, Gentingbet and novibet have partly filled the vacant slots, but there is no escaping the fact bettors today have fewer prices to compare than 12 months ago.

Does that matter, though? “If they only had three operators, oddschecker would struggle for conversions,” says the affiliate’s former staffer. “Those conversions that were going to Ladbrokes, Coral and Betdaq will just go to someone else, ultimately. The only hit for oddschecker is going to be the monthly fixed fees for the grid.”

Furthermore, oddschecker is much more than just the grid these days; it’s a massive content machine and trusted source that has excelled with its SEO strategy to the point where the site organically outranks all UK bookmakers for key search terms. According to recent data from digital marketing agency Stickyeyes, oddschecker had more than 500 search results from 319 keywords analysed, giving it “significant levels of search result real estate”.

OGM also includes PokerNews, CasinoSmash and football statistics resource WhoScored.com, while the Flutter group also owns huge traffic generators in the shape of Timeform and Sportinglife. Therefore, to lose three brands from the oddschecker grid, while disappointing, really is a drop in the ocean for Flutter when you look at the bigger picture.

Whether others follow suit and leave the grid is a big unknown, but oddschecker still has a bright future, Behar says. “I’m bullish about oddschecker’s future and I have a huge amount of faith in it on the basis that it provides a really interesting service to brands. I love oddschecker and I’m a huge supporter of it, a massive fan of the business and I use it as a customer.

“The issue is there is a massive lack of differentiation across all these bookmakers. Ten years ago, you’d arrive at oddschecker during Cheltenham and if you were trying to find value and look for prices moving slower than others, oddschecker was a fantastic resource for that.” In oddschecker’s defence, homogenised pricing is partly down to consolidation and certain operators relying on the same third-party suppliers for pricing. “What oddschecker has to become is much more of a content business,” Behar adds. “And that’s what they are – a content business led by the grid. But what position does oddschecker have in the market if all the operators are offering the same prices? On the basis that they have been so successful with their SEO strategy, the business will have to evolve but I can’t see it going away.”

In the meantime, oddschecker says discussions are ongoing with the Ladbrokes and Coral brands as to their possible return. “We continue to talk constructively with Ladbrokes and Coral and I hope we can reach a new deal at some point in the future,” reveals oddschecker chief commercial officer Guy Harding. “Whilst this dialogue continues, oddschecker is working hard to integrate new partners to its offering and looks forward to welcoming three more partners in the coming months.”

He also said: “In oddschecker’s 21 years as the UK’s number one odds comparison site, we’ve seen a fair few brands come and go, and often return, for various reasons.” So this could just be a natural lull in the evolution of the grid until more brands arrive, but to permanently lose brands of the stature of Ladbrokes and Coral – if they can’t be persuaded to return – is still a blow to the grid whichever way you slice it.