Dean Shannon on his plans to take his Neds betting venture overseas

The Australian online wagering market is currently in state of flux. Last year, the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill was finally rubber-stamped by the government, enforcing a ban on online poker, the end of ‘click-to-call’ live betting and a number of other restrictions. Meanwhile, talks of a potential nationwide tax on a point of consumption basis are ongoing.

Yet despite these considerable regulatory headaches, former Ladbrokes Australia CEO Dean Shannon refused to be thwarted as he vied to return with his new business venture. Neds, which launched just in time for the Spring Carnival, is one of Australia’s newest online betting operators and has already taken the market by storm after claiming two trophies at the EGR Australia Awards this year.

But Shannon’s ambitions don’t begin and end with the Australian wagering sector. The Bookmaker.com.au founder also intends to take his Neds business overseas into a number of markets including the UK, Africa and the US, while moves into cryptocurrency and online lottery are still on the horizon. And based on the progress he made with Bookmaker.com.au and Ladbrokes Australia, you wouldn’t want to bet against Shannon finding similar success once again.

EGR Intel: How has Neds performed since launching late last year?

Dean Shannon (DS): We launched on 4 October and the performance has been very strong. Apart from the first few weeks of teething problems on the busiest days, I’m very pleased with the way our system has worked. For the first three months of trading we turned over just under A$240m in staking, which exceeded my expectations. So we did about $60m in October, $105m in November and $74m in December, while January has continued on at more than $70m.

We wrote the platform in a language which I hadn’t been involved in before called Go, which is what Google created to power its search engine. It is a very efficient and transactional language, and we’ve got everything 100% in the cloud now so that we can think globally. We needed to have an efficient solution which we could spin out quickly into different jurisdictions and a platform which had multi-lingual and multi-currency capabilities.

EGR Intel: It seems like you launched with a major marketing campaign which was both ambitious and controversial?

DS: Initially I was slightly concerned with the way media is so fragmented these days, what kind of pick-up it was going to get and how a new brand would be received in Australia. However, we’ve picked up more than 80,000 clients in a short period of time and they’ve responded really well to the brand, which is well supported by our media partners. This allowed us to have a broad reach and plenty of frequency, and we covered the main media, as well as a strong digital footprint and a little bit of an affiliate presence. Initially we budgeted for about 40,000 clients in the first three months and ended up 70,000.

EGR Intel: What do customers get from the neds product that they won’t from other Australian bookmakers?

DS: Our target demographic is 18-to-39-year-olds, but without alienating the 40+ category. We are focusing on the recreational client and I’ve got a strong focus on giving them the content they want to see. For example, we have a few unique features like ‘bonus cash’ and an amazing bonus engine with so much flexibility that we haven’t properly tapped into yet. We’re also trying to do the basic functionality well but to have a good feature roadmap such as the different spin we have on the odds boost product called ‘Bet Boost’, which is where we add more money on your stake.

A couple of weeks ago we also launched a bitcoin-only website – but it only lasted for one day. The idea was that you could deposit, bet and withdraw in bitcoin in constant currency. However, the regulator decided it needed more time to evaluate it, although they were just doing their job by getting their head around bitcoin before making a final decision. If we get the greenlight we would be ready to go though as it’s a bit of fun and a way of keeping wagering relevant with what’s going on in the world today.

Neds launched last year as part of a major marketing push across Australia

EGR Intel: What were the reasons behind your departure from Ladbrokes Australia?

DS: I resigned in August 2016 and worked out my notice until February 2017. There were a lot of changes going on at the firm at the time and I was a bit burned out in the position as the framework didn’t necessarily suit me. A lot of Ladbrokes people were also leaving with the merger coming up and it was just time for me to move on at a time when the business was in good shape. I really just wanted to do something else, although at the time I didn’t necessarily know what that would be.

EGR Intel: You have since hired Ladbrokes Australia’s CEO-designate Paul Cherry?

DS: Paul decided he wanted to do his own thing and started building his own platform for a client, which eventually had a change in direction. So it was a good opportunity for me to pick up some of Paul’s staff, and then later on I brought him back into the team. He’s a great asset, very strong on product and knows the industry extremely well. He will head up our Australia business while I focus on the bigger picture part of our strategy.

EGR Intel: What can we expect from the ‘bigger picture’ work you’re personally focused on?

DS: The next market we plan to launch in is the UK with a satellite setup there, and we are now going through the process of preparing our submission for a licence. While the UK is a well-serviced market, I think if you can go in with a good product and something different then you can make an impact there. I don’t for one minute think we are going to threaten any of the big guys, but I’d just like to have some form of presence there and focus heavily on a live product. For the last 15 years bet365 has really educated a whole generation about how to bet live, and I think it’s an opportunity to come and play in their camp a little bit.

EGR Intel: How big do you expect your local presence to be?

DS: We’re going to have a similar footprint in all our jurisdictions we launch in going forward and aim to have a local presence in each one. I want to have local customer service people rather, than the cheaper option of going to the Philippines, because I think customers deserve to talk to English people about problems they are having with an English bookmaker. I want to make sure we have a strong client services team, some local traders, a local marketing coordinator and a country manager looking after it all.

EGR Intel: Which markets other than the UK are you currently looking at?

DS: I’m looking at some markets in Africa and Europe, as well as some of the acceptable South American countries; we will have a completely vanilla business and only enter regulated markets. We’re trying to keep both eyes on the US too as I’m keen to start that application process as soon as we can because it could take up a year to go through that. The vibe is very strong in the US at the minute, and one of the things I’ve noticed is that the lobby groups have definitely separated gaming and sportsbook, and I think the sportsbook argument has got a really good chance of winning.

EGR Intel: Talk us through the time between you leaving Ladbrokes Australia and how you ended up launching Neds.

DS: I had time to think about my options and originally came up with the idea of launching an international online lottery business. The plan was to build a sports lottery product for Australia, and start an international sportsbook so I could have a go at markets outside of Australia. So it was essentially going to be a combination of the two. But with Lottoland making too much noise in Australia, and getting pushback from various jurisdictions, I decided to shelve lottery idea and launch an Australian sportsbook business first.

EGR Intel: How similar would the lottery product have been to what Lottoland does?

DS: It would have been very different. But even though it wasn’t the same thing as Lottoland, I didn’t want it to get caught up in what was going on with them, so I just decided to take my foot off the pedal. I’ve still got the idea of this sport lottery-style product. It’s something that’s still not out there in the market currently as it’s a new idea, but I don’t really want to discuss too much about it because it’s something I’d like to look into again in the future.