If you’ve been following our journey over the past couple of years, you’d have noticed our strategic focus on the customer. The way customers interact with us and our products is vital to the success of our business now and in the long term. If you listen to your customers, give them a great experience they will reward you with their custom – thus linking the wider customer experience explicitly with financial performance.
According to insights from Boston Consulting Group, the importance of customer experience isn’t so black and white. Companies with the best insights into customer experience see that it’s as good for customers as it is for companies. Organisations that are looking in the rear-view mirror for how customers are interacting with them are losing out to companies with real-time insights.
In the UK alone, we see 71,000 trading events every minute on an average Saturday. To put that into context, that’s comparable to activity on a major stock exchange. The volumes of activity we see across our global business are tremendous, and within this activity lies precious insight into what our customers love, what they want more of and how we can keep their activity safe and enjoyable.
You’ll have heard me say the importance of staying on the customer pulse before and I can’t stress how important this is. It makes Entain a business for the present and the future. We provide customers with what we know they love and we use data to understand what they’re interested in. One example of delivering on this is our diverse offering of games created in-house by our studios, such as Bigger Banker. These are a hit with players around the world and are some of the most popular games that we offer to our customers. In this edition of Engage, you’ll get to lift the lid on how we approach live gaming and the processes behind it, as well as taking a look at some of our hit games this year and how they were created
Over the past two years, we’ve really accelerated our growth strategy. Entain has been a key consolidator in the market and we’ve stayed true to our M&A heritage.
Over the past nine months, we’ve executed 18 transactions and welcomed a host of new brands, new markets and thousands of new colleagues around the world. As the chief executive of this rapidly growing business, one thing is certain, we never sit still!
Our expansion is underpinned by our appetite to only operate in locally regulated or regulating markets, and we’ve seen excellent opportunities to grow our presence, diversify our business and capture market share.
The first of which is the attractive Netherlands market, where you’d have seen our strong intent to lead with the acquisition of BetCity. It’s an excellent brand with an established footprint in the region and a well-built customer offering and marketing capability. The team, led by an experienced CEO, is a robust addition to our European brand portfolio and aligns well with the Group values and ethos. We’re expecting it to complete this year and I’m looking forward to the future growth of this exciting brand.
In addition to our expansion in The Netherlands, we’ve also demonstrated our intent to lead in the Central and Eastern European market with the formation of Entain CEE. The start of that journey begins with SuperSport, the top sports betting brand in Croatia, and local experts in running a market leading sportsbook. Having worked in the CEE region in the past, I know the importance of local knowledge and expertise in these markets as a critical business factor. I’m very excited about the start of this journey with Entain CEE and, led by a highly successful and proven local leader, will allow the new partnership to utilise the strengths of the Entain Platform to best serve the region. You can learn more about the Croatian market in this edition of Engage.
Now, back to our core business. We proudly operate an omni-channel approach in some of our markets. Our bricks and mortar shops are loved community hubs where sports fans, players and bettors can socialise and enjoy our products.
To stay relevant to this segment of the market, we have to push the boundaries on retail technology and product offering to bring the thrill and excitement to customers in our premises.
We use data and insight to bring these customer experiences to life in-person and my colleague, Andy Hicks, explains the role of technologies and how they’re used in our UK brands.
It’s been an exciting year so far for Entain, we’ve been busy putting our strategy into action and delivering on our key focuses for the year, but our work is far from over. This edition is includes some of the exciting initiatives that are taking place behind the scenes – enjoy it and I look forward to updating you all again at the end of the year.
Jette