Part two: The challenger brands squaring off against the UK's heavyweights

Kwiff

Launched: 2017

HQ: Chiswick, London

CEO: Charles Lee

Kwiff, the brainchild of Unibet and Kambi founder Anders Ström, was established on the premise of building a company based on new technology that could automate operational overheads. When it launched back in 2017, the UK was already a saturated market and, with the huge regulatory shift since, sitting on its own tech has meant the sports betting firm has been able to adapt accordingly.   

Famous for its tagline ‘You’ve been kwiffed’, which featured prominently throughout its series of TV ads six years ago, where any bet or eligible cash-out can be supercharged, the brand’s focus is on providing entertainment as well as product personalisation. Having in-house tech means kwiff can gather as much data as it wants on player behaviour, too.

Kwiff CEO Charles Lee believes a differentiated product is vital in a competitive UK market. “Our aim is to create a seamless and user-friendly experience across all our products, focusing on excellent UX and UI. This extends to the look and functional aspects of our apps, as well as to the integration of native features for both iOS and Android platforms.” This philosophy reaches further into how the operator communicates with players when they use the chat function and ensuring payments are as fast and as smooth as possible.

In addition to spending time working on its PAM and front-end, kwiff highlights how it is just as important to make sure its employee tools are built well to equip its staff to efficiently and effectively handle customer queries as well as see a holistic view of player accounts for compliance reasons. If it’s for the core business (sportsbook, casino platform, player rewards, the PAM, back office), all of those systems are built in-house, while third-party integrations are used for non-core business.

Kwiff’s platform is easy to update and iterate if needed, while those with monolith systems would find it trickier to do so. Lee shares his thoughts on the pros and cons of in-house tech: “It can be slow. You’re in a race with others to build different things. But we’re not trying to build everything. We’re trying to build things really well that focus on the player. So, the benefits of that is we can control what we want to build. Our destiny is in our own hands. We control our roadmap. We don’t sit at the bottom of the third-party roadmap, which can be truly frustrating.”

One of the company’s founding principles is automation. If it’s effective to do so and it makes the player experience better, kwiff will automate that functionality, be it withdrawals or trading in the sportsbook. Personalisation, customer flows and responsible gambling also use automation but with a manual element sitting on top. For Lee, keeping the business lean and efficient is of the utmost importance. “We should never be a company of thousands and thousands of employees because the technology is doing that heavy lifting for us. But we want the right people to be leading that tech and overseeing it as well,” he states.

As a digital product with native apps, kwiff’s marketing strategy is mainly geared online across CRM, acquisition and affiliates. Lee says it has been essential to take a sensible approach dedicated to prominent KPIs to move the business forward. He elaborates: “That’s particularly important today when the industry is focusing on profitability rather than metrics that are a bit more for show [vanity metrics] such as NDCs, turnover, registrations, etc. Those are all irrelevant without good conversion, retention of those depositing players and also revenue.” The sports betting operator is able to track all of the data and make data-driven decisions from that.

Kwiff has achieved strong growth in the UK and continues to see the opportunity here. However, Lee acknowledges that it’s not going to be for everyone: “It’s a highly educated and regulated gaming market that can be tricky for operators that aren’t set up in the right manner to deal with that. So, if you’re not willing to commit the time or the resource to adapt, you’ll probably see operators go for faster, easier returns in other regions.”

Kwiff, meanwhile, considers the UK one of its core territories and is fully focused on growing a strong business in the market for the long term. With stricter regulation inevitable in other territories, Lee believes the business will already be fully prepared to enter new markets just before or when they are regulating due to its already solid foundation in the UK.

After a handful of operators exited the UK market last year, building and keeping customer trust is paramount for lesser-known brands. Having been in the market for a while, kwiff has built trust with players by making sure winnings can be cashed out and received quickly.

The other focus should be on user experience, which kwiff has worked hard on with its product to make sure customers have a smooth journey, that it’s giving off the right first impression and securing loyalty. Likewise, the CEO applies this same principle to operational aspects of the business. “Don’t cut any corners,” Lee insists . 

Fitzdares 

Launched: 2006  

HQ: Notting Hill, London  

CEO: William Woodhams

The UK’s ‘big six’ [operators] are much of a muchness,” asserts William Woodhams, the effervescent CEO of Fitzdares, from the company’s London HQ as he outlines why the UK market lacks uniqueness. “For a consumer, it’s just a different set of colours. Maybe bet365’s tech is a bit better and Sky Bet might be better at communicating. No one is that interested in the [Betfair] Exchange anymore, so there’s very little difference in the market.” Fitzdares looks to zig when others zag. Formed nearly two decades ago by ex-Ladbrokes PR manager Balthazar Fabricius, this operation harks back to the days when suited-and-booted bookmakers were known euphemistically as ‘turf accountants’ and the service was personal and discrete. 

Rather than going after £10 football acca punters, larger-stakes gamblers are the target cohort. Indeed, Fitzdares will accept bets up to £500,000 on certain markets. The company has attracted clientele that includes British aristocracy, though the aim is to acquire, as Woodhams puts it, “quality customers”. The CEO leans forward in his black leather chair to clarify the point: “Quality doesn’t mean losing, it means customers who will stay with us a long time and appreciate our level of service. You could send us a fax to place a bet if you want to, although maybe don’t do it right before the off,” he smiles.

Even the humble telephone might seem an anachronism in today’s world of whizzy apps and biometric logins, yet Fitzdares customers can get straight through to the office (one ring) to place a bet. Each client has a personal phone number, so no need to reel off account details. “We’re moving to 24-hour customer service, so you could place a bet at 5am with a highly skilled broker,” Woodhams adds. Taciturn bettors have the option of text message or email, and there’s also the desktop site and app powered by a bespoke FSB product.

Fitzdares very much has a reputation as a horseracing-centric bookmaker willing to “take on punters the old-fashioned way”, Woodhams insists. The goal is to become a top-five UK bookmaker when it comes to the Sport of Kings, especially with horseracing becoming less of a priority for the top-tier layers. “I’m hoping they leave a gaping big hole that I can move into,” the 45-year-old remarks. While around 50% of the business is horseracing, football has “grown exponentially” and tennis has “gone through the roof”. “It’s all about product on those sports,” Woodhams states. 

Fitzdares is also unique in that it has private members clubs, in London and the Cotswolds, as well as a summer residency at Windsor Racecourse and a pop-up club at the Cheltenham Festival. A similar facility has opened at Fulham’s Craven Cottage. The flagship London club, which is currently housed at a temporary location in Belgravia ahead of a move to larger premises, is where members can tuck into dishes like roast monkfish with stewed fennel and guanciale while watching live sport on wall-mounted TVs before decamping to a quiet corner for a game of backgammon or gin rummy.

Access to all four clubs costs £600 a year. “I’m not trying to say I’m Amazon Prime, but when you have that additional [club] revenue stream it makes it very easy to give customers everything they want,” says Woodhams.

However, acquiring well-heeled individuals means Fitzdares is more exposed to the effects of conducting affordability checks on its bettors than bookmakers with a large pool of low-stakes customers. Affordability is very much the topic du jour now that the government’s proposals for financial checks have been revealed in the white paper to overhaul Britain’s gambling laws.

“It’s true that about 30% of our customers deliver about 80% of racing revenue,” Woodhams notes. “It’s the person who retires, has a couple of million quid in the bank and this is their pastime. They could spend their money on wine, holidays or cars but they choose to spend it on gambling because it’s fun.”

With horseracing being intertwined with betting, and some punters refusing to comply with operators’ requests for bank statements and P60s, Woodhams issues this stark warning: “I think affordability, as it is proposed, will basically kill UK racing.” He adds: “They say a small percentage of our customers will be impacted by affordability checks but it’s not, 80% of my customers will have to fill out comprehensive affordability checks. There is a cohort who are just saying no. They’re not flag-waving, libertarian Brexiteers; they just can’t be bothered.”

Despite this gloomy outlook, the CEO says his company is agile enough to grow turnover on other sports and open in new markets, like when Fitzdares entered Ontario in February. Either way, this bookmaker will continue to stand out by offering its customers the velvet-rope treatment, from the distinctive telephone betting service and swanky members clubs to clients being gifted a one-off illustration by resident artist Bill Butcher of their favourite horse in an amusing scenario, like playing football or reading the paper in bed. Fitzdares could never be accused of being “just a different set of colours” to the next bookmaker.