Q&A: Rank Group CEO on digital gains and the omnichannel “sweet spot”

Fresh from announcing an 8% year-on-year (YoY) jump in group revenue to £734.4m, Rank Group CEO John O’Reilly is already looking ahead to the next 12 months.

The CEO of the gaming-led operator is excited about the tech developments in the offing and is far from keen on resting on his laurels.

Rank’s digital division reported a 12% YoY revenue spike to £226m, driven by a 20% rise for Mecca and a 21% spike for Grosvenor, with the operator citing “key technology developments” as the driver.

These developments, including a new content management system for all brands and a fresh Grosvenor app, are just the start, according to O’Reilly. Plans for a Mecca app are in the offing, with the product due to go live before Christmas.

And having acquired Stride Gaming back in 2019 for £115m and Rank having embarked on an extensive migration since, the CEO is bullish on his teams’ ability to continue to push ahead.

With Rank reporting a 12% YoY spike in underlying revenue in Q4 2023, and that momentum carried into the start of fiscal year 2024-25, plus a dividend handed out to shareholders of 0.85p, there is a current of confidence brewing at the business.

EGR: What drove that Q4 momentum and how is that continuing in the new fiscal year, especially in digital with revenue up 12%?

John O’Reilly (JOR): We had a very strong Q4 on the back of a number of technology deliverables. The principal one that made the biggest difference is we’ve introduced a single content management system that drives the front-end of all of our sites.

Now we are delivering through one content management system, it’s sleeker, it’s quicker, it’s faster. We can roll it out to specific sites or all sites. It has made a big difference for us as before we were operating on five different content management systems.

Revenue for Mecca grew 20% and Grosvenor 21% and they benefited from being the first brands to transfer across onto the single content management system. It’s been probably the most significant thing we’ve done.

We also launched a new app for Grosvenor. It’s a big deal for us because its the first app we developed in-house. We did the deal for Stride back in 2019 to bring in proprietary technology. We’ve had a lot of work to do, which we knew we had to do, but I think we’re now really starting to be rewarded for that work.

EGR: In terms of the Grosvenor app, what are some of the key upgrades with the product and what are your expectations?

JOR: We built it on the latest technology. That was very important because developers like working on the latest technology. It’s a much, much faster experience than the Grosvenor app we had built with a third party which was inflexible. We’ve now got an app that is leading the field. So, it’s a big step forward.

It’s a bit early to say [on figures]. We are seeing decent returns. We haven’t really started pushing it yet because we still haven’t delivered the daily retention game that will be delivered in the next week or so, and then we’ll really start to push the app.

Our app penetration is very low, around 20%, maybe a bit less than that. We’d expect half of our customers to be transacting with us on the app in 12 to 18 months’ time.

EGR: Will the Mecca app follow the same roadmap strategy or is there anything you want to do differently, from learnings with Grosvenor?

JOR: We will launch Mecca in the first half of this [financial] year and I’d expect it to be delivered before Christmas. That’s a big step. We spent a lot of time on UX and UI. We’ve done customer research for years and a lot of that research was fundamental for what we are doing with Mecca. The designs for Mecca have been ready to go for some time, it was about freeing up pipeline delivery and then moving on.

EGR: Omnichannel didn’t get a specific mention in the report but could you give some more colour on any gains there?

JOR: This is the real sweet spot. Our core advantage is our ability to deliver the customer a seamless experience across channels. A core part of this is delivering the platform. We’ve got a lot we got a long way to go to deliver what we’d like to deliver to the customer whereby they can do whatever they choose to do through one account. They can walk into a casino and use their account on their phone, top up, play and then to withdraw their credit balance back to their phone. That’s the direction we’re headed. We have some key deliverables along the way and already we’re making progress.

In the year just has gone, 37% of our digital revenue came from customers who also played in Grosvenor venues. There was about 30% in Mecca equivalently. So, it’s [around] a third of our Mecca revenues, and somewhere between a third and a half of our Grosvenor revenues come from players who also pay in venue, so there is a strong overlap and those numbers are growing.

One of the big deliverables this [financial] year is a unified membership from Mecca customers. That will mean that when you are a Mecca customer, you’ll be recognised as a Mecca customer cross-channel. That’s the next deliverable.

EGR: The market has also reacted well to the report, is that a combination of confidence in results but also the dividend?

JOR: I think shareholders like a dividend. The investment community is made up of income funds and growth funds. I think people expect this business to grow in revenue. We’re moving in the right direction and that’s recognised by shareholders. I’m not getting carried away with it just yet, there’s a long way to go. We’re going to keep delivering.