Our CEO, Richard McGuire, spoke to SBC Magazine for this month’s magazine. Read the article below on how we are about to enter the most challenging period in history, but how we remain well positioned for change and challenge in 2020.
Download the Sportech article here and read the entire magazine here.
While each one of us face unprecedented challenges to our usual behavior and routines due to the global pandemic, we need to prioritize advice and guidance from health authorities, and we urge you to consider your actions and movements currently.
Sportech remains focused on serving our clients to the best of our ability while also protecting the health and welfare of those clients, our employees, and our communities. Sporetch will not ask any staff to travel or place themselves in a potentially higher risk situation. If you feel you are being pressured, do not hesitate to reach out to HR, your manager or indeed me directly.
As we all do our part to help prevent the spread of coronavirus, we will share information and updates on the actions we have taken or are planning to balance client service continuation with personnel health worldwide while also doing our part to mitigate the harm from the COVID-19 pandemic.
It goes without saying that this is an unprecedented moment for all of us, so we urge our friends and colleagues to follow all instructions issued by your local and national health authorities and keep yourselves and your families healthy.
We will publish updates about Sportech PLC, Sportech Racing and Digital, and Bump 50:50 in this space as events and actions dictate. For updates on Sportech’s Winners, MyWinners.com and Bobby V’s operations in Connecticut, please also visit www.mywinners.com and social media sites.
Sportech has been serving our industry for over 100 years and the world and its peoples have endured many difficult events over that time. As we have noted previously, our core business relies on sports and sports require stamina. We will all need that enduring quality to weather this situation, but together, weather it we will.
– Richard McGuire, CEO
Following the release of Sportech’s financial results for 2019, but also its coronavirus-related market update, Gambling Insider caught up with CFO Tom Hearne.
What’s the current breakdown of Sportech’s revenue, geographically and by sector?
The breakdown from an industry perspective is about half our revenue comes from what we call our racing and digital business; that is about £36m ($42.2m) last year – through the provision of tote services and digital betting services, as well as our Bump 50:50 revenue. And then about £28m of that business comes from our venues, through our exclusive pari-mutuel racing license in the state of Connecticut.
Geographically, at the moment it’s mostly US revenue. Most of our horseracing customers are in the US market; we also do business with lottery in the Dominican Republic and have our UK and European businesses. Our business is probably two thirds dominated by the US market.
Do you see this breakdown changing long term?
It varies somewhat on the nature of the business we’ll be able to grow into. One of the things we’re looking to expand is sports betting, which we wanted to do mainly through licenses in the state of Connecticut. The Connecticut legislator is currently reviewing sports betting legislation and the Government came out favourably about Sportech getting one of those licenses. Obviously, with everything that’s been going on, the legislative sessions have been halted completely.
Otherwise, we are looking to continue to expand our international capabilities and our digital offering. We’re looking to expand into the French market and we continue to look at how to expand in those kinds of markets. We’ll look at expansion in the US and Europe around tote customer and digital perspective. But really that’s around how to change their operational focus from the traditional betting terminal, to more of a better digital offering. We think that’s where the market will really continue to have opportunity.
It’s been stated the coronavirus pandemic is affecting all Sportech’s business segments. How much more could EBITDA forecasts be reduced by if sporting postponements last beyond June 2020?
As you can imagine, most of our businesses require the operation of either horseracing and/or sporting events, which have been significantly curtailed in the current environment. The one big traffic still going is from the Hong Kong Jockey Club, where we have generated significant revenue from. They are actually on the backend of the COVID-19 pandemic and starting to let people back in after having racing behind closed doors.
For us, one of the things we’ve done is put in place a war room type situation, for lack of a better term, where we sit down and assess things on a weekly basis. Most tracks are running behind closed doors and require customers to bet digitally. But, yes, obviously if this extends past June, we would continue to see revenue fall in that timeframe. We will eke out an available line of credit and assess which payments can come in to have enough available cash flow. So we’re getting there and working on every available opportunity.
Do you envisage Sportech’s share price increasing once the industry comes out the other side of the coronavirus pandemic? The market is obviously at a low now but Sportech’s share value had also fallen beforehand.
I don’t think you’d ever talk to a CEO or CFO who doesn’t want to increase the stock price. But I think the work done in 2019 and restructuring the business a bit, all the work we’re doing from a technology perspective, is showing people we can improve operating cash flow. Over time, we are making the business a better and more focused business. A business that is less industrial and more digital. And I think if we can do those things, investors will be pleased with what we’ve been able to put together.
We’re moving our business into the 21st century and if we do that well, I’d hope we’re rewarded for that. I think the stock price today reflects the uncertainty about our ability to go through that process. So the more and more we can do that and demonstrate we’re successful at doing that, investors will be happy with that, especially if we can take those revenue capabilities and convert more of that revenue to cash.
How has the transition been since Richard McGuire’s appointment as CEO in July 2019?
As part of that, Richard obviously comes from a financial background. You aim to put together a good team on the executive side – people who have a deep knowledge of operation. I have a lot of operational background and so do others in the team. We try to make sure we work together as a team on all the operational activities; Richard’s been in the business a long time and has a good idea of what we’re going to do to grow the business. Like all people who get deeper and deeper into the operational side, I think they realise there’s a lot more parts than they could have imagined in an operating business.
But there are a lot of good people in our business who’ve been in this industry for a long time. They are quite open minded about how to evolve the business and that’s key. You want to engage your staff, who are on the front lines every day. What do they see that we could be doing? So a lot of the conversations we’ve been having are about how to go from the old big terminal style to a more tablet or digitalised way. A lot of that we’ve gauged from the field, where people have come up with a lot of ideas about how to have a more digitalised and less-capital intensive business. Richard’s done a good job of engaging people in that process.
Read this article on Gambling Insider here By Tim Poole
One of Sportech’s charity partners, WellChild, held their Festival Focus event on Thursday 5th March, gathering over 200 racing fans for an expert racing panel to share their top tips for The Cheltenham Festival 2020.
The panel included ITV Racing’s Ed Chamberlin, Trainers Kim Bailey and Richard Philips, Columnist and former Racing Post editor Bruce Millington, and Jockey Aidan Coleman. The panel shared their experiences, tips and opinions for this year’s Cheltenham Festival, whilst raising money for national children’s charity, WellChild.
The event helped raise almost £17,000 for WellChild which will support the charity’s mission working with seriously ill children, young people and their families.
On Tuesday March 3, 2020, members of the Sportech Team – Richard McGuire, CEO; Rich Pingel, CLO; and Ted Taylor, President of Sportech Venues – went before the Connecticut General Assembly’s Public Safety and Security Committee, which oversees legislation related to gaming in the State. The team was there to testify, on behalf of all Sportech employees in Connecticut, to the need for common sense, equitable Sports Betting legislation.
Ted Taylor, President of Sportech Venues, stated in his testimony,
“We view this legislative session as a critical juncture for the gaming industry in Connecticut and an opportunity to permit local operators – existing partners of the State for many years – the right to compete effectively against…illegal markets and surrounding states [that have already legalized the activity].”
Sportech CEO Richard McGuire submitted written testimony that further reiterated Sportech’s consistent position on Sports Betting in Connecticut; that the State should authorize the four existing licensed gaming operators – including Sportech – to offer online and retail Sports Betting with appropriate taxation and regulation.
CEO McGuire wrote in support of a bill raised to legalize Sports Betting, stating,
“The approach outlined in Bill 5168, to license the existing gaming partners to offer Sports Betting, provides consumers a competitive choice; critical to a healthy legal Sports Betting marketplace, will protect jobs, drive incremental State revenue from established licensees, and tackle the illegal market.”
Continue to watch this space for updates on the status of Sports Betting in Connecticut.
Sportech is speaking out in favour of sensible betting legislation in the State of Connecticut.
Our Sportech team in Connecticut, USA, have rolled out a campaign to educate law makers and the public on the stakes for Sportech and other gaming operators in the State should Connecticut fail to legalize Sports Betting in the current legislative session.
Richard McGuire, CEO of Sportech PLC, filed an opinion piece in Connecticut newspapers to draw attention to key issues surrounding the legalization of Sports Betting in Connecticut.
In the piece, McGuire stated,
“Connecticut can enact Sports Betting legislation now and empower all the existing gaming operators who have partnered with Connecticut for over a quarter century to deliver it responsibly.”
He urged all stakeholders to,
“…work as a team to get this over the goal line.”
In addition to CEO McGuire’s op-ed, Sportech’s targeted Sports Betting legalization communications plan in Connecticut involves an extensive online print campaign, testimony at legislative hearings delivered by Sportech Venues President Ted Taylor and others, amplification of our message through our CT sports betting issues website, media interviews, and more.
Watch this space for future updates on the status of Sports Betting in Connecticut.
Sportech Racing and Digital, a division of Sportech PLC, unveiled new technologies for retail pari-mutuel betting at the 38th Asian Racing Conference taking place this week in Cape Town, South Africa.
Deemed Sportech’s ‘next generation’ terminal betting software, the new platform is an agile, efficient, future proof solution that functions seamlessly on a range of third-party hardware products, allowing betting operators to declare independence from proprietary hardware.
Conference participants from around the world are viewing demonstrations of the new software platform, which can be used to offer the full range of on-track and retail betting services including teller electronic point of sale (ePOS), roaming teller ePOS, full self-service, and on-track mobile self-service.
The software platform delivers the teller-based and self-service functionally with real-time connectivity to Sportech’s Quantum™ System Tote. 
Despite its flexible nature, Sportech’s new betting software sacrifices nothing in terms of usability or features. With an interface crafted by experts in gaming UI design, it presents an exciting departure from more typical betting interfaces, with a significantly enhanced user experience and intuitive workflow.
Update from Bump 50:50
Bump 50:50, a division of Sportech Racing and Digital, helped Daytona International Speedway hit a record raffle jackpot at this year’s Daytona 500 event. Daytona International Speedway raised a whopping $344,192 using the Bump 50:50 platform online and at the Speedway, a record jackpot for the 3-day event.
50/50 raffle ticket proceeds benefit Veterans Tickets Foundation (Vet Tix), Daytona International Speedway’s chosen charity, which provides major sporting event tickets to more than 21 million Military Service Members and Veterans.
The jackpot of the 50/50 raffle is split in half, raising $172,096 for Vet Tix while $172,096 goes home with the lucky winning ticket holder.
This is Bump’s third year at Daytona 500 International Speedway, in 2018 $56,398 was raised and 2019 $233, 022 was raised for Vet Tix. The team at Bump are delighted with the 510% growth from 2018 at Daytona 500 and look forward to hit another jackpot at next year’s event.
For more information about Bump 50:50 and their electronic raffle systems, visit here.
Sportech PLC, the international betting technology business, announced that its Sportech Racing and Digital division have secured a new contract with the Irish Greyhound Board (“IGB”) that both extends their Tote Services agreement for a new multi-year term and upgrades IGB’s current Series 7 Tote to Sportech’s state-of-the-art Quantum™ System.
Quantum™ is the most widely deployed Tote betting software in the world and will offer IGB unprecedented access to new pools and new markets, with its expansive and ever-growing list of pools and bet types and unmatched global commingling capabilities.
Joe Lewins, Director of Tote and Wagering at Irish Greyhound Board, stated, “The Irish Greyhound Board is happy to be making this important investment in our betting operation with the upgrade to Sportech’s Quantum™ Tote and look forward to delivering an overall improved betting experience to our players. Sportech have been an excellent technology partner to IGB for many years and we look forward to a continued productive relationship.”
In addition to the current functions available to all Sportech clients who use Quantum™, the contract with IGB will involve further development by Sportech’s team of product developers to incorporate features key to greyhound racing operations.
Bruno Gay, Sportech’s Vice President of Sales and Business Development EMEA, remarked, “Sportech are very pleased to extend the power of Quantum™ System to IGB and to offer them the pools, market reach, and operational tools to help them maximise their potential. We look forward to a continued strong business partnership with IGB that harnesses Sportech’s technologies to elevate the betting experience for their players.”
Update from Sportech Racing and Digtial
Sportech client Danske Spil of Denmark began offering the French PMU Quinté pool through its DanToto off-track betting venues, web, and mobile channels.
Launch of the PMU Quinté in Denmark coincided with the running of the Prix d’Amérique, known as the trotting world champion final which is held every January at Hippodrome de Vincennes in Paris and was broadcasted this year in more than 40 countries for its 100th anniversary.
Sportech were delighted to see that within just a few days of launch in Denmark, a lucky Danish punter won the PMU’s Quinté after choosing 5 horses in order for the maximum Quinté payout.
Sportech’s Quantum™ System offers clients such as Danske Spil access to a broad range of global pari-mutuel, pools with unmatched commingling capabilities and round-the-clock hosting and operational services.
