Interesting article on BetR from Matthew Trip's perspective today.
Has reached profitability in its own right now, looking at consolidation in the sector, far more optimistic outlook on it than recently speculated in the press etc.
Being a major client of BETs this is quite positive & pleasing to read.
Patience!
Betr profitable and in the market for deals, Matt Tripp says (copyright link)Betr profitable and in the market for deals, Matt Tripp says
Kylar LoussikianDeputy editor - BusinessSep 25, 2023 – 5.00amListen to this article4 minMatt Tripp, the wealthy bookmaker who launched Betr with News Corporation last year, says he is still interested in buying ASX-listed PointsBet after his wagering business turned its first profit.
In an interview, Mr Tripp said he had “always envisaged it would take somewhere between 20 and 24 months to become consistently profitable” but Betr had now turned a “modest profit” for the past three months.
Matt Tripp at Wentworth Park, where he made his start as a bookmaker. Oscar Colman
“There are six or seven operators now who have expressed interest in selling their business to us,” he said of Betr’s desire to acquire other bookmakers. “We’re engaged with, we’re in diligence with most of those operators.”
“There remains interest in PointsBet. If they have interest in selling, then we’re still there. And we’re still interested. But they’re one of a few, and we’ve got some decisions to make for the first time come the start of this year. For the first time we’ve got genuine profitability and clear air.”
Mr Tripp, the son of a bookmaker who first took bets at the Wentworth Park greyhound racetrack in the 1990s, acquired Sportsbet in 2005 for $250,000 before selling it to Paddy Power, now London-listed Flutter Entertainment, for $388 million six years later. He later acquired BetEzy, which became CrownBet, purchasing William Hill Australia and selling the entire business – eventually known as BetEasy – to The Stars Group in 2019.
Mr Tripp told The Australian Financial Review that he and his team had “completed probably 12 deals in the last 20 years and been responsible for the consolidation, a lot of the market, as we see it today”.
“That’ll be no different over the next couple of years. Our ambition and our intention is to continue to consolidate this market by bolting on operators that have either had enough or see value in selling now,” he said.
PointsBet agreed to sell its operations in the United States to Florida’s Fanatics, backed by SoftBank, for $US225 million ($349 million) after rejecting a $220 million bid from Betr for its Australian operations last year.
In May, the Financial Review’s Street Talk column reported that Betr had engaged Barrenjoey as it considered whether to sell itself with News, one of the largest investors, suggesting it would not provide additional funding.
Mr Tripp confirmed that sales process had ended. “If someone is interested in tabling the right number we will look at it,” he said. “But we decided to stay the course and raise further capital, which we have subsequently done.”
“We’ve had a capital raise both internal and external which sees us now with the firepower to go and commit to the M&A that I speak off.”
He declined to provide details about the additional capital that Betr had raised. Betr had secured financing in February, but this fell through with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in early March, sources close to the matter said. The Financial Review previously reported this financing would have been used to pay for the acquisition of PointsBet, if successful.
Bookmakers are now heading into the busiest period of the year, with the NRL and AFL grand finals followed by the Spring Racing Carnival’s Melbourne Cup. Betr, according to its competitors, is exposed to an NRL grand final win by the Penrith Panthers because it offered generous odds of 100-1 on the team winning a third consecutive grand final this year.
Betr offered customers who had taken those odds $400 to cash in their bets after Penrith defeated the Parramatta Eels in August. The maximum those who made the bet could have won was $1000.
Penrith’s Nathan Cleary in August, when the Panthers won against the Parramatta Eels. Getty
But Mr Tripp said Betr was “ambivalent as to who wins the AFL and the NRL grand finals” because of the way its wagering book had been managed.
“The world out there thinks [a win for Penrith] is shocking results for us and that’s great, that gets them talking in the pubs and gets them talking on the street and on the racetracks,” he said. “If the Panthers win, nothing would make us happier. We would have tens of millions of dollars injected back into the Betr ecosystem for punters for the next six weeks, which is the most exciting time of the year being spring carnival.”
“The fact is that it needed to be too good to be true given we’re coming from a standing start,” he said of the 100-to-1 odds which had also been offered at last year’s Melbourne Cup and which attracted a record penalty from NSW gaming regulators. “We’re up against the likes of Flutter, so [we had to] grab market share, and the campaign gave us instant 25 per cent brand awareness in a pretty crowded market.”
