Q&A, Jeremy Thompson-Hill, OpenBet CEO

Earlier this month OpenBet announced it had signed a seven-year deal with Singapore Pools to provide the operator with a new online sportsbook for the Singaporean market.

The supplier fended off a number of other interested parties to seal a deal with the non-profit organisation, which is in the process of securing an exemption to the country’s recently introduced online betting ban.

The ban has forced the withdrawal of a swathe of operators and, should its application be successful, will hand Singapore Pools the opportunity to grab significant market share, with the Singapore Turf Club the only other operator to have applied for an exemption.

eGaming Review caught up with OpenBet chief executive Jeremy Thompson-Hill to discuss the deal and the logistics behind working with a partner on the other side of the world.

eGaming Review (eGR): You must be pleased to have signed the Singapore Pools contract – how did the deal come about?

Jeremy Thompson-Hill (JTH): This is an excellent deal for us. There are not a lot of customers of this magnitude left within Asia because the regulation out there is still quite grey, so when an opportunity like this comes along it becomes very important and this is a great win for us.

We first met Singapore Pools at ICE in 2014. It was after this that they issued the EOI (Expression on Interest) which we responded to and were eventually successful.

eGR: And what does the deal actually involve – what will you be providing?

JTH: It’s a like-for-like replacement of the sportsbook. Obviously Singapore Pools as a business has a large product set but we are just looking at replacing the sportsbook for now. Depending on how legislation goes over the next year then there may be other opportunities.

eGR: Would those opportunities include the roll-out of your omni-channel product suite?

JTH: None of that is on the table for the moment. Obviously when we sell our product what we want to do is ensure we deliver a future proof solution and find all the ways we can to advance our product and advance the customers’ business and omni-channel and bringing that holistic view is part of that advancement.

However, it was a targeted tender that we received. If the opportunity arises then we want to be there with all our products; but first things first, we need to replace the sportsbook and there has been nothing indicated that it will go any further at this point.

eGR: And what’s the timetable for roll-out?

JTH: It’s still early days in the requirements gathering stage at the moment so it’s hard to put a timescale on it. Obviously there are different solutions we could deploy depending on their needs – generally in new business some customers want to deploy within the first 3-6 months while others are prepared to wait and go to market with as strong a product as possible. We need to go through that to find out what those dates will be.

eGR: Will this include basing an OpenBet team out in Singapore?

JTH: We work in an agile way with our customers which means you need to be beside them. We don’t need the whole team there, but we need a critical part of our team there. So what I would expect going forward, and as it is today, is that we will have a continued presence in Singapore.

eGR: Does this mean you may set up a new office out there?

JTH: I think we will have an office in Singapore but the question is how we go about that. Right now we are working within the Singapore Pools office to support the project but one way or another we’ll need to have a presence in Singapore as that’s how I believe we work best with customers.

eGR: The Singapore market is very heavily regulated so the Singapore Pools deal will be subject to high levels of scrutiny – was that a consideration?

JTH: This is nothing new for us. We’ve been in that environment before because we’ve already done a number of lottery deals for sports betting and a lot of those operators are operated in the same way so I don’t see it as being anything too onerous on OpenBet.

These things are very tightly regulated anyway and are watched very carefully by the government and regulated by the government. So we expect and we invite a fair bit of scrutiny. There is a strong expectation our system will be rigorously monitored and there will be a lot of strict controls, checks and balances, but that’s life in highly-regulated markets. Certainly there will be nothing there that we won’t welcome with regards to our system.