Toby Bentall Q&A: Recently installed Oddschecker managing director

eGaming Review (eGR): Firstly, congratulations on your recent appointment. Can you tell our readers a little bit about how you came to be Oddschecker’s new managing director?

Toby Bentall (TB): My background is in the City where I worked with PwC as an accountant and qualified there around five years ago but I had always wanted to move out of finance, or at least move away from a directly finance-facing role and in to a commercial role. Whilst my experience during my time at Sky had been very commercial, Oddschecker provided an opportunity to run my own profit and loss business within Sky and take it forward.

eGR: Now you have your feet under the desk, do you plan to make any changes to the path set out by your predecessor, Derren Maggs?

TB: A lot of things will stay the same. Derren did a great job and I want to build on the position he got Oddschecker to. I need to try and replicate that in the short term so that I have the relationships across the industry that Derren had. That’s a really big part of my focus immediately. Also, Derren had put in place the technical plan of creating a new Oddschecker mobile product which is live at the moment in its web platform but will also be going into the App Store over the next few weeks with a view to properly launching that with a marketing campaign in early 2014. Part of my focus is ensuring that campaign is delivered right and the product is absolutely tip-top for launch. The big headline that is going to give us is that customers will be able to bet from within the app rather than having to click out to different bookmakers, as is currently the case on the website.

eGR: How will the app work in practice? Will customers be able to deposit funds into their various operator accounts via the app?

TB: At the moment you won’t be able to top up your account through the app but that is part of phase two – that’s definitely something to come. However you will, within the app, be able to see your balance so you’ll at least know whether you have funds in there or not, and that will be in this phase to launch imminently. We don’t expect desktop traffic to decline in the short to medium term but the huge growth we are seeing is on web apps and mobile in general so this will be our technical focus for the foreseeable as we make enhancements to mobile. At the moment we get about one third of our traffic through mobile and that’s growing quickly year on year, whereas desktop is flatter.

eGR: Oddschecker revamped its website earlier this year launching new characters Inspector Odds and his dog Checker in the process. What do you hope these characters will bring?

TB: I think it’s fair to say we’ve done a soft launch for that and it’s only been on site properly now for about three months. You will see within this campaign coming up a much more integrated launch of those two characters within a push for downloading the mobile app. Those characters are a big part of the customer message that we are trying to get across in the campaign to come. The adverts will be placed across all channels, mainly TV and digital but there’ll be smatterings of press and other bits as well. We’ll advertise mainly on Sky and around sport when we can. We are Sky-owned but there’s a policy in Sky to pay market rates and that’s what we’ll be doing.

eGR: What type of customer are you trying to attract through the advertising campaign and recent rebranding?

TB: We are trying to cater for the casual punter that’s already started coming to Oddschecker. For example, we know that 45% of people don’t take best price on site so there’s a big section of our customer base that aren’t shrewd, sign up everywhere punters and just want to compare two or three of their accounts. The branding is a reaction to that and to try and get people engaged further with the site.

eGR: How much importance do you place on social media?

TB: Social media is becoming increasingly important. I think we are doing OK but we can also do a lot more. We’ve got around 30,000 Twitter followers, a number which doesn’t compare that well with the top social performing bookmakers so, again, part of this marketing launch will have a social focus so expect to see more things around that.

eGR: How would you best describe Oddschecker? Is it simply an odds comparison site or does it offer more than that?

TB: I think it is more than that and we need to do more to play to that. For me Oddschecker is the shop window for betting and it is seen as that. We need to find ways of better showcasing peoples’ offers. It’s incredibly competitive, not just on price but on offers and promotions, and I think we need to better showcase that so customers can come to Oddschecker and see who has the best offer, where the best price is and where they should be betting today. It answers all three points. We want to be a place where operators can grow their brands not just show their odds. We want to be a shop window where they can speak to their customers and we want to play to that strength more.