Q&A: Breon Corcoran reflects on his 17-year career in betting and gaming

Breon Corcoran’s decision to step down as the CEO of Paddy Power Betfair (PPB) back in August 2017 was met with great surprise. Corcoran oversaw one of the biggest mergers in industry history, sealing the £7bn deal between Paddy Power, where he previously served as COO, and Betfair, where he spent three years as CEO. Eighteen months later, he handed in his letter of resignation.

The City considered the Irishman to be a real smart cookie, as demonstrated when PPB shares dropped by 7% on the morning of the announcement. Corcoran spent nine months pivoting, according to his LinkedIn page, before eventually resurfacing in another CEO role – this time in London’s booming fintech industry with global payments specialist WorldRemit.

Below, in his first trade press interview since leaving the sector, Corcoran revisits his proudest moments and also reveals some regrets as he casts his mind back across a 17-year career at the summit of the UK’s betting and gaming industry. Does he miss betting and will he ever be back?

EGR Intel: How did you get into the gambling industry?

Breon Corcoran (BC): I got into sports betting by accident. My background was trading investment banks but a friend of mine wrote a business plan to do sports betting in 2000. I knew nothing about sports but a little bit about risk management, so they asked me to get involved in the business plan. Eventually, someone in Dublin at Paddy Power heard that there was an Irish guy who knew something about sports betting and the very fact that I could spell online sports betting correctly seemed to qualify me. I joined Paddy Power in April 2001.

EGR Intel: Was that before Paddy Power had launched online betting?

BC: No, we were live and we had been for about a year. We went live in the UK the week I joined and my predecessors ran the infamous granny advert, in which four old ladies walked across the road with odds on them, which was completely unrelated to the fact there was a 4×4 speeding down the road towards them. A month later, we became the first bookmaker to sponsor Big Brother. I spent 10-and-a-half years in Dublin before going to Betfair in August 2012, which was when the Olympics was on in London.

EGR Intel: How did the merger between Paddy Power and Betfair materialise?

BC: I think the boards in all large companies realised that scale was ever more important. I think there had always been a mutual respect between Betfair, which was a disruptor through technology, and Paddy Power, which was a disruptor through branding. As the boards thought about the benefits of scale and the necessity for consolidation, it was an obvious enough pairing.
I’d like to think that my background with both firms helped a little bit but I’d have to recognise the strategic insight of the boards as well. These things don’t happen because one person wants them to happen. They have to make sense and pass the scrutiny of many stakeholders. But it was fun and the merger itself was the right thing to do. It wasn’t always fun because we lost some talented people. Afterwards, it was always my intention to become a CEO in a different industry, so once the integration was complete it seemed like a good time to hand over.

EGR Intel: Your departure came as a surprise and shares dipped – what did you make of it?

BC: It was great that Peter Jackson was somewhat available in the wings as he’d been on the board of Betfair from the start of 2013. Post-merger, Paddy Power Betfair bought FanDuel, which wouldn’t have been possible for either of the heritage parts. The success of FanDuel and the North American business delights me to this day.
I thought that after a relative calm following the integration, handing over to someone who was super-energised to take the business forward for the next five years was the right thing to do. I think the stock market in the short term isn’t necessarily always correct. As a shareholder, and I’m still a very happy shareholder, having a team that’s energised about taking the business forward is exactly what I wanted. After 16 or 17 years in the saddle, I really wanted to enter another industry before I retire.

EGR Intel: Was moving into fintech always the plan?

BC: My wife is Californian and I thought we would move to California. Despite telling them it wasn’t a democracy, my wife and children made it a democracy. I should have prorogued the family. We decided to stay in London and I truly believe that in the global consumer internet space, one of the sectors where the UK has competitive advantages is in fintech. I think the Californian mantra of ‘fail fast and break things’ doesn’t apply brilliantly in a regulated space. And when you look at the cluster of fintechs in London, from Revolut to Monzo to WorldRemit, there are some world-class companies here that are solving real problems globally. I thought that was an interesting place for me to spend the next five to 10 years.

EGR Intel: What does fintech offer that gambling couldn’t?

BC: The one thing I regretted with a lowercase ‘r’ was that betting still isn’t global. Despite having been privileged to lead one of the larger companies, I hadn’t done business in Africa, China or Latin America to any extent. But a business like this, that legitimately does business in 150 countries globally, is just a different proposition. That was something I was hoping for. With it comes a completely different set of problems and how we think about brand and product is different from how betting companies, aside from bet365, think about localisation. It’s a very different professional challenge.

EGR Intel: How are you dealing with that challenge at WorldRemit?

BC: There are some trade-offs between scale and relevance for the customer. Because we serve so many different customer segments, in so many different geographies, we effectively almost always lead with the same proposition. Just as UK-based betting companies would almost never lead with an NFL offer, except on the night of the Super Bowl.

You are forced to think about scale, rather than localisation in a different way. Because we’re a regulated business, we have to go deep into local regulatory complexity, much like betting companies do. You’ve got a trade-off between deciding whether to be super customer relevant or to be focused on efficiency and scale of benefit.

It’s funny, I talked to a headhunter and said I liked large, competitive, fragmented unsexy markets. The nice thing about competitive and fragmented is that good operators can take share, whereas the nice thing about unsexy markets is that they don’t naturally attract talent, so you have to go and build teams.

I was never going to end up in a crypto business, which was super sexy, where some of the brightest people in the world are and passionate about it. I prefer somewhere like this, where you can build competitive advantage over time, get to know your customer base, do better segmentation over time, deliver personalised products and pricing over time.

EGR Intel: Online betting revolutionised the sector. Is banking going through the same transformation or is it more nuanced than that?

BC: The drivers of customer choice in money transfer today are either price or convenience. Zero price is a pretty compelling proposition and there are people in the market with that. We major on convenience so people can pick up cash literally minutes after the money is sent from Montreal to Mombasa.

Someone much wiser than me talked about how history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes. There hasn’t been a cash-out moment in payments yet, where the whole thing has transformed, but you can imagine the evolution of proper micro-payments being that.

EGR Intel: Does the payments sector find it easy to attract talent or are candidates more interested in the glamorous world of cryptocurrency?

BC: Talented candidates can choose the environment that makes the most sense for them. If they want the slightly Wild West stuff, there are lots of unregulated payment options in that space, just like there once was in betting. That will have a certain risk dynamic that works for some people but not for others. For people who want to do early stage fintech, there are literally teams of two, four or 10 people in WeWork offices trying to take on the big payment companies.

EGR Intel: What about WorldRemit specifically?

BC: We’re at the growth equity stage and we’ve raised $200m since I joined. We employ 800 people and bring in the best part of $200m revenue, so for people who are at a stage in their career where they want some stability and a challenge, a company like us might suit.

Many people will interview here because they’re interested in both the international part of the story – the fact that more than half our money ends up in Africa – and on some level are interested in what is known as financial inclusion and the social purpose to what we’re doing here.

EGR Intel: What is the social message of WorldRemit?

BC: We’re not a not-for-profit and we’re not a charity. We’ve taken investor money and they expect to get it all back and then some more. We’re very much a profit-oriented, competitive beast, but as we drive down the cost of money transfers for some of the poorest people in the world, there probably is a social kicker to that as well.

It’s refreshing to see a global talent pool here whereas betting is a very strong draw for people interested in sports or have a cultural understanding of it. People are much more interested in talking to me about how money transfer into Africa works, irrespective of their age, ethnicity or gender, than about how to cash out on multiples.

EGR Intel: Is the opposite true in betting? Are top candidates opting out of the industry due to the battering it has taken in the media?

BC: Betting appeals and there is still a betting product across pretty much every culture I’ve come across. Betting-type entertainment is something that society wants and arguably needs, and doing that in a licensed, transparent and ethical way is something the very best companies in the space do, but that is just not part of the framing anymore and the pendulum has swung too far back.

EGR Intel: The last article we wrote about you was when Paddy Power called for a £10 stake limit on FOBTs. How damaging was that debate for the industry?

BC: Our official position at Paddy Power as a resolution to the FOBT debate – which at that point had been going on for the best part of three years – was to recommend a stake limit of no more than £10. We didn’t envisage having to close any shops at that level but it would absolutely have hurt us in terms of revenue and profitability, as well as withdrawing some customer choice. The word I used in that letter was toxic and I felt the industry would have been better served if it had found resolution with the government quicker.

I truly think that the £2 stake limit has undoubtedly taken some of the toxicity out of the debate, but I think if senior industry leaders had their time again, they would have read the writing on the wall much earlier. For the large retail chains that was difficult, but it ultimately didn’t help customers and didn’t help shareholders to have that level of unnecessary toxicity going on for as long as it did.

EGR Intel: This year has seen operators launch a wave of responsible gambling initiatives. Does this show the industry has learned its lessons from that debacle and is eager to get on the front foot ahead of the next wave of regulation?

BC: The betting industry has changed enormously over the last few years. I think good companies continue to show real leadership, be that Peter Jackson and Dan Taylor at Paddy Power or Richard Flint, who I think continues to be a sane voice representing the industry. I think there is greater understanding today of the merits of having a balanced debate about this.

I don’t want to be too critical of the past – I am more a part of the past than of the present in that industry – but in hindsight very few people would argue that the industry was well-served by the FOBT debate.

EGR Intel: What did you make of the Flutter Entertainment rebrand? Was this flagged while you were there?

BC: I think Flutter Entertainment was a great idea. When you run some really distinctive brands from TVG or FanDuel to Paddy Power or Betfair, an all-encompassing brand is a great idea. I couldn’t help but be amused on the part of Josh Hannah, one of the founders of Flutter which merged with Betfair in 2002. Flutter Entertainment captures a lot of the essence of the good parts of the DNA of those businesses, which is that sports betting is fun for the majority of people. All parts of the business were built on great brands. I don’t know whether they call themselves Flutterers or Butterflies, but I do think it was a great decision.

EGR Intel: Would you ever return to the betting industry?

BC: No, I think this payments thing will keep me busy for the next 5-10 years, and then I’ll have to disgracefully retire.