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Bet365 Hangs Up on UK Tele-Bettors for Good
By Jeff Osienya Jun 09, 2020 EntertainmentBet365 finally bids farewell to its obsolete phone betting services in the UK after declined interest. The company’s online business continues to grow as they progressively expand into the nascent USA market.Bet365, the UK online betting bigwig hung up on its telephone betting gamblers for the last time to officially shut down its longstanding tele-betting operations. The company shelved the telephone betting service last week indicating that the said business had been dwindling for some time due to lack of interest. According to Pat Cooney, the Bet365 spokesperson, the number of punters opting for betting via the telephone had declined so much that the company could no longer “justify the staffing levels” of the operation in question. As for the affected staffers, the company reassigned them to new positions elsewhere within the organization.
With the telephone betting service gone offline, legacy tele-bettors are now encouraged by the company to instead reach out to the customer support team so that their accounts can be transferred to Bet365’s digital platform. The axed legacy betting service had been remarkably popular in the 80s and 90s as it was the only option available for placing wagers remotely. However, since the advent of online betting, a lot of tier-1 bookies have been terminating their tele-betting presence because it was gradually becoming phased out by the fast-growing internet gambling industry.
After Bet365’s exit from the tele-betting market, gamblers who prefer the personal touch of phone betting now have very few sportsbooks to turn to for the service. Ladbrokes, a GVC Holdings subsidiary remains one of the few sportsbook companies that currently offer tele-betting. But even then, the last time the operator mentioned the phone betting service in their earnings report was back in 2016 and at that time, tele-betting merely accounted for £2.7 million of a whopping £662 million in gross revenue.
Bet365’s Digital Operations Continue to Thrash Competition
It isn’t much of a surprise that Bet365 is shelving legacy tele-betting services in favor of its online gambling business. The online operations of Bet365 are dominating the UK market despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. SEMRush, a Boston-based market analytics, and online visibility company released a survey report indicating that Bet365 is outpacing its competition in the UK in terms of the volume of site visits.
SEMRush’s data for April shows that Bet365.com garnered a little over 20 million visits from UK gamblers while SkyBet.com, the closest competition trailed at nearly 16 million visits. WilliamHill.com and Betfair.com followed SkyBet closely with about 13 million and 11.9 million visits respectively from gamblers in the UK.
Moving away from the UK, Bet365’s April numbers also indicate that the operator is whipping the competition both home and away. In the Brazilian and Chilean online gaming markets, the company’s volume of site visits is almost 12 times as much as what the closest rival Sportingbet is getting.
Steady Footprint Expansion in the USA Market
Meanwhile, Bet365 has been aggressively expanding into the emerging USA market whose potential continues to grow as the states continue rolling out regulated sports and interactive betting services. It all started last year when Bet365 debuted in the USA via New Jersey after joining hands with Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City to launch an online sportsbook.
Come May 2020, the operator teamed up with Century Casinos to break ground in Colorado’s newly regulated sports betting market. The UK sports betting giant penned a decade long contract to offer an online sportsbook and a mobile betting application under a Century Casino skin. However, before the two brands can start rolling out the interactive sports betting services, Bet365 will first have complete the application and approval process per state law. Century Casinos on the other hand already received a master license from the Centennial State’s gaming regulator.
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