Opinion: Branching out internationally
Racing Post B2B Director, Eugene Delaney and Commercial Director, Sam Houlding sat down with Nathan Joyes from Trafficology this month to discuss the B2B division and it’s plans for 2019.
Can you give us an overview of when the Racing Post’s B2B division started and how it has evolved in recent years?
Eugene Delaney (ED): Our B2B division was set up about ten years ago and was quite a small revenue stream. The main aim was to syndicate our content into bookmakers to help them up-weight their racing sections on their websites. Over the last couple of years, we have worked closer with bookmakers, working across both greyhounds and horseracing and diversifying into football and sports content. It has grown from bookmakers using content to building bespoke digital and retail products and branching into football and other sports, which we can then translate and grow internationally.
Why has Racing Post expanded the B2B team?
Sam Houlding (SH): There has been a continued growth trajectory. Eugene has put a lot of structure around what we do and made it a highly professional operation. We’ve brought in people with different skill sets that maybe we didn’t have before, which has been very important from a marketing and operational point of view in order to take us to the next level. Overall, expansion has been completely in line with growth and marketplace opportunity.
Touching upon Racing Post’s acquisition of ICS Media – how has this helped to improve your content and digital marketing? Was there anything in place for the Breeders Cup for example?
ED: ICS has been fantastic because the business complement what we do. ICS currently supply a range of services, including the official audio horseracing commentary for the majority of bookmakers. They also have a very strong translation division which we can utilise. The digital side of ICS are proven leaders in SEO and content marketing. This strengthens our offering across both companies and allows us to build a stronger product offering for both the domestic and global market.
What are your plans with ICS Media moving forward, especially as the jump season is well under way?
ED: We are still working together regarding horseracing and greyhounds in the global marketplace, because we currently serve the majority of the UK marketplace. We’ve managed to be successful in the UK market and our focus is to grow our international content and footprint, and the development of football and other sports content. You will see output coming into ICE on a combined product.
SH: Away from the product synergies, there’s also a very interesting fit with ICS Digital and in particular their content marketing services. It supplements what we do from a marketing and advertising perspective, allowing us to build out our specialist media services portfolio for the betting and gaming industry. Between the two businesses we have a lot of customers that interact with us from a marketing perspective, that we can now offer an extension of services to. When you bring this and the content services together with Racing Post’s business channels, the synergies across both products and marketing work really nicely together.
Not only have Racing Post acquired ICS, but you have also struck a partnership with Apsley Group International. What have been the benefits from the investment and have they been able to help the Racing Post go beyond racing?
SH: Apsley bring a huge amount of talent and expertise across areas of SEO and social media marketing that adds another dimension to Racing Post’s skills set. Alongside operating as an industry leading affiliate their knowledge across these areas brings a lot of benefit to Racing Post as a whole.
ED: From a content viewpoint, it also gives us a route to different audiences to try and test content. Apsley has “Football Super Tips” and “My Racing” which appeal to potentially a different and younger audience, so as we are producing more content for the B2B marketplace before we go to bookmakers. We now have different sites where we can AB test and trial content to get feedback and this allows us to engage with different audiences.
SH: The demographics of the audiences across Apsley and Racing Post actually dovetail really nicely, because Racing Post would typically be your more mature, expert racing audience, whilst Apsley hold influence in the 18-30 newer aged punter bracket. It means that between the two businesses we have a great extension across a huge sports betting audience.
Racing Post launched Sports API back in September. Can you explain more about this and the impact is has had?
ED: From our perspective, we are trying to diversify into other sports. When it comes to racing, there’s a huge amount of content and tips out there and similarly, there is a lot of content when it comes to football. However, when you are looking at snooker, darts, tennis, there’s not a huge amount of content around or places to go and get tips/content. We have journalists here who work solely on specific sports and so what we said was: ‘Ok, there’s a huge amount of content on TV which people are watching and streaming. Let’s try and put some handwritten content and tips together.’ So we have teams who are writing content on about 15 sports. We can now syndicate this through our APIs for bookmakers to take. That will be available on a B2C platform at some point in the future, but at the moment, it’s to help the bookmakers engage with their audience.
With horseracing, you can watch all their previous races, you can read the form about everything they have done, including stable tours. But you go into some of the big boxing fights or snooker for example – where do you gather all that information? What are their head-to-head records? Where do you get all the stats? There are multiple betting opportunities which we can research and give insights on which will hopefully give punters a reason to bet. That’s where we are really focusing at the moment.
Is the Racing Post’s B2B division where you want it to be at the moment? What are the next steps?
ED: We have been on a good growth trajectory which we would like to continue in both the domestic and International market with developments in our racing products as well as the launch of our football and sports products.
What have been your biggest challenges?
SH: As you recruit more people , you try and keep everyone aligned to the same vision and direction of travel within Racing Post, and I think that’s always a challenge. This centres around making sure that our products are industry leading and always aligned to the requirements of our customers. For example, we’ve been working on an international racing project for around a year; we are looking to produce what we deliver for UK and Irish racing across all other significant racing territories in order to become the central point of supply for global horseracing content. We have just rolled out our full suite of South African racing content which has the same level of verdicts and analysis for each runner and race, as we produce for UK and Irish racing. We’ll also be rolling out US, Australian, French, Indian, German and others over the coming months. A project like this requires every individual to be aligned on what we are doing and how we bring it to the marketplace.