Ladbrokes cut the ribbon on its new digital marketing arm in Israel this morning, also announcing it had recruited the chief operating officer of rival William Hill’s online division to head up its new online venture with Playtech.
Jim Mullen (pictured centre above), COO of William Hill’s highly successful online JV with Playtech since October 2010, is now on gardening leave ahead of starting as Director, Digital for Ladbrokes in November.
Ladbrokes CEO Richard Glynn this morning highlighted the importance of Mullen’s three years’ experience working with Playtech, as the bookie tasks the supplier with engineering the turnaround it achieved with its rival’s online business.
“[W]e look forward to him helping us make the Ladbrokes brand as strong in the digital arena as we are on the High Street”, said Glynn today.
Ladbrokes’ Israel division opened this morning will work closely with its Gibraltar-based online operations, with Mullen supported by senior managers recruited from Playtech-associated CRM company The Nation Traffic in the Tel Aviv office.
The division has been established as part of a five-year, performance-based software and services agreement which will also see Lads migrate its online properties onto Playtech-owned software platforms.
The deal announced on 11 March followed less than two weeks after William Hill agreed to pay £424m to buy out Playtech’s 29% stake in its William Hill Online JV. Ladbrokes had however started talking to Playtech about an online deal more than two years earlier, forcing Hill’s to take out a legal injunction in February 2011 aimed at preventing its JV partner from entering similar deals with other operators.
Lads’ digital profits fell 39% in 2012 to £31.8m from £52.4m the prior year, due to heavy investment in digital infrastructure and start-up costs in the regulated markets of Spain and Denmark. By contrast, William Hill Online achieved a huge 36% improvement in operating profit to £145.3m.
The planned overhaul of Ladbrokes’ digital platform under Glynn has been plagued with glitches and delays since £50m of investment was earmarked for the project more than two years ago.
Glynn’s first digital chief Gary McIlraith was also sacked less than a year into the job in June 2010, as was his successor Richard Ames in July 2012 ahead of Lads posting its worst set of online results in nearly a decade.
The bookie also walked away from a potential takeover of 888 in April 2011 after failing to agree a price. A £470m deal for Sportingbet foundered in October 2011 on regulatory concerns over the Turkish-language Superbahis business, subsequently split off and sold to GVC later that month.
Much to Glynn’s chagrin, Hill’s boss Ralph Topping managed to later broker a deal for Sportingbet’s regulated Australian and Spanish busineses which disposed of the remaining mainly dot.com operations to GVC.
Article written by Peter Holmes
