News

Betfair launches bespoke Ipad App

by Betfair

London / United Kingdom / 2012-02-06 (GlobalGamingPR) - First of a stream of new releases from San Francisco mobile outpost

BETFAIR GROUP PLC (LSE:BET) has today launched its next generation iPad App into the Apple store.

The bespoke native application is a marked enhancement from previous products and is the first to come out of Betfair’s development office in San Francisco, where the Company has recently relocated key parts of mobile development under the leadership of Raj Vemulapalli, who was recruited from Yahoo!

The App offers a vastly improved iPad experience to Betfair customers, bringing fixed website functionality to a betting product that is specifically tailored to the tablet device. Its key features include:

Intuitive landing page, with easy access to the most popular events along with live scores.
Trader focused betting experience, with betting functionality mirroring that available on the fixed website.
Seamless access to Betfair’s betting.betfair site, which includes insight and analysis from Betfair’s content team and ambassadors.
Ability to deposit and withdraw funds from anywhere within the App- enabling easier betting.

Commenting on the launch, Raj Vemulapalli, Vice President of Mobile Engineering and Head of Mobile Technologies at Betfair said: “This App is a game-changer for our customers, offering them a seamless betting experience that replicates the fixed web, whilst making use of the unique features available on iPad. Mobile is the coming force in the betting industry, and the shift from online to mobile is in many ways more exciting than the shift from offline to online.”

Tony McAlister, Chief Technology Officer at Betfair said: “Mobile is increasingly important to Betfair’s bottom line and product launches such as this are now key strategic milestones. In addition, the fact that this App was developed in just two months out in San Francisco shows that our decision to launch a US technology office in Silicon Valley is already paying off. I hope this is the first of many US developed products which will extend our lead in the online betting space”.

Betfair is the betting industry leader on mobile devices, and this iPad release comes against the backdrop of dramatic growth in mobile revenues last year. Around 10% of Betfair’s exchange activity is now conducted via mobile phones and this figure is set to rise even further.

At its Interim results announced in December 2011, Betfair said that it had seen over £800m of bets traded through mobile in the six months of the financial year, enabling the Company to record first half mobile revenues of 9m, up 88%. The Company has seen that mobile usage leads to an increase in Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) and also that mobile customers have lower than average churn rates. In October, Betfair launched a significantly improved iPhone app which has driven further increases in usage and ARPU. Around 40% of Betfair’s customer base has now placed a bet via a mobile device.



About Betfair

Betfair is the world’s biggest betting community having pioneered the betting exchange in 2000.

Driven by cutting-edge technology, Betfair enables customers to bet at odds sought by themselves or offered by other customers. The company now processes over seven million transactions a day from its three million registered customers around the world. In addition to sports betting, Betfair offers a portfolio of innovative products including casino, exchange games and poker.

Betfair has twice been named the UK’s ‘Company of the Year’ by the Confederation of British Industry and has won two prestigious Queen’s Awards for Enterprise, being recognised for Innovation in 2003 and most recently for International Trade in 2008. Betfair currently employs over 2,000 people worldwide. The company holds betting licences in Gibraltar, the US, Tasmania, Italy and Malta.

Betfair’s products have received industry recognition in recent weeks, with Betfair winning awards for ‘Mobile Operator of the Year’ from E-gaming Review and ‘Best Gambling Company’ at the Mobile Entertainment awards.

Category: sports betting / Products