Entering the UK market can be daunting at the best of times, primarily due to the extremely competitive nature of the region. Add in the regulatory alterations as well as increasing influence of the black market, and the territory becomes worryingly difficult.
When this concerns a company venturing into one specific space for the first time, things look almost impossible. However, this is where a Racing and Sports and Stakemate collaboration has beaten the odds.
In the first of a two-part special, Arya Tayebi, Founder and CEO at Stakemate, and Jack Kelliher, Managing Director for UK and Europe at Racing and Sports, elaborate on the tender process, what appealed for both parties and how to differentiate within an ultra competitive market.
To begin, how would you say that this partnership has progressed over the almost one year since it was disclosed?
Arya Tayebi: I would say that it’s progressed quite well, starting with the integration side of things. We were really pleased with the level of output and help that Jack and the team put together on that side and to go live.
One of the main things that you look for as an operator in partners is that ideally you’re not communicating with them too much after a few months because things are going well, but they’re also there and readily available for when you want improvements or there’s something to look at.
It’s been very smooth from going live up until now when we’ve hit just past 12 months of the relationship.
Jack Kelliher: At the start of the partnership we had a lot of communication together as we were doing something for the first time. It was our first MTS client into the UK, and it was Arya’s first time having and running a racing product.
From that moment in time, I think we’ve progressed pretty well as a partnership. We speak less frequently from a management point of view, but the trading side of the business is in constant dialogue.
We’ve got plans to increase the product and the performance even more. We’re really proud of being partners with Stakemate because of the trust they put in us at the start.
We could see the ambition that they had for their product early on, and we made that clear in the sales process, maybe a bit too much.
We’re really hungry to work with them, because we could see the vision that they had.
What appealed about Racing and Sports during the tender process?
AT: We were really looking at four things in terms of a partnership in order to pick the right group.
First and foremost, you’re always going to look at commercials. Then you’re going to look at data, which groups have the right data.
We don’t want to go and integrate with two, three or four different providers on the horse racing side to service our product and not just show the odds feeds, the settlements, MTS, data side of things. All that needs to be in one group, which we saw with RAS.
Then the other two things as well I’d say is finding a good group of people to work with. That’s very underrated in this space.
In terms of Racing and Sports, from the sales, integration and product management teams to having the C-suite on the calls early on helping out, you can clearly see the genuine passion to integrate into our business.
The fourth one kind of feeds into that. We didn’t really know horse racing at all. From the early days right up until today they’ve been helping to educate our operation and product teams on what’s the best way to integrate the product, and helping us out with designs early on in the integration process.
These were all things that made us feel comfortable picking RAS over some other strong players in the space as well.
How do you believe that you stand out from the competition during such tenders?
JK: For us, it starts with the complex nature of the space. Racing is very complex and fast moving.
We have a lot of people with deep experience. Brent, the managing director, has been in the industry for 25-30 years, myself 10 years, Andy, 20-plus years, James King, 20 years nearly now.
The key people for an operational sales, commercial, and trading point of view, which are the key components of making this work, have got a lot of knowledge.
One of the things that we do at RAS is we look to try and put ourselves in the buyer’s position. Arya is buying this product for the first time. We sensed that early on in the process that we need to support and have his and his team’s back.
We’re making this decision for the board, for their investors. What things do we need to think about for that operator? That’s how we go about approaching the sales cycle. Not the commercial numbers straightaway, but how can we really assist you in building this product? Where are your gaps? Where are you worried as an operator?
That consultative side at the start sets us up better as we go through the process and get into the more nitty-gritty of this product. It starts with the people.
We’ve got a good product to support it. When you look in our space, there are not many service providers that can deliver a complete solution from one feed.
It starts with the approach to the sales process and just trying to be helpful. We put ourselves in the buyer’s shoes.
Ultimately we’ve got a great product. As a business, we’ve got a great product, and the market’s now seeing that. There’s been a change in dynamics from a Racing and Sports point of view. Now we are most established in the space thanks to the trust of buyers like Arya.
Could you talk us through your process of entering the UK market, and detail why you believe that you are different from the numerous options that are already available to players?
AT: We all know that the UK market is an incredibly competitive and highly regulated market. When we entered, we knew none of that. We were very naive in entering, and I think that allowed us to think big in terms of our approach, because we didn’t know about all of the different obstacles in place to have success.
At Stakemate, we believe in making it fun, and how we do that is simple and easy to use in terms of the product, but also social betting as well too, and that means sharing bets with your friends, copying bets, betting together and having that atmosphere and really doubling down in those two things in order to make it fun for our players.
That’s what we’re trying to do at the end of the day. The other thing is discounted a lot in this space, but having your own proprietary product and player account management system allows us to not only deeply understand players when we’re talking to them and learning about what their wants and needs are, but also being able to implement that into our product and doubling down in our vision.