At the top of his game
TALKING HEADS BRIAN MATTINGLEY, CEO, 888
p o t e At th e m a g of his With online gaming giants 888 going from strength to strength in recent times, Gareth Bracken met CEO Brian Mattingley to discover the secrets to his success
Brian Mattingley, pictured at 888's London offices, December 2012
58 gamblinginsider.com
BRIAN MATTINGLEY, CEO, 888 TALKING HEADS
888 COO Itai Frieberger
Social gaming title Bingo Island has brought in increased revenues for 888 in recent months
They say the end of a year represents a time for reflection on the 12 months just passed, which means that Brian Mattingley will be one of the happiest bosses in gaming heading into 2013. The 888 CEO has enjoyed an excellent 2012, presiding over the online firm’s eighth successive quarter of year-on-year revenue growth – 7% for the third quarter of 2012 – an impressive achievement primarily driven by notable increases in poker turnover, including a 21% rise for Q3. Mattingley’s success story actually began in fairly unremarkable fashion, with the experienced 60-year-old assuming the role of interim CEO in April 2011 to little fanfare following the departure of Gigi Levy. The new man’s impact was immediate however, and his and the company’s strong performance during his initial period at the helm eventually saw the former deputy chairman handed the role on a permanent basis. Meeting with Gambling Insider at 888’s Bond Street offices in London, a welcoming Mattingley was naturally keen to discuss the company’s improvements, enhancements and achievements, although he didn’t shy away from analysing the group’s less successful ventures and major challenges for the future either. The
end result paints a portrait of a leader and an organisation riding the crest of a wave – but also fully aware that many a tough task lies ahead in the quest to ensure that such a position is maintained. Have you surpassed even your own expectations of the company’s performance during your tenure as CEO? We’re exactly where I think we should be. My management team are very talented and I think the three of us, me, COO Itai Frieberger and our CFO Aviad Kobrine have always set our sights at a realistic level. I have one phrase that I continually drive into our team and that is “we will always over-deliver rather than over-promise”. I targeted quite clearly at the beginning of the year that I expected us to drive our business forward so that we saw a share price of over £1 by the end of 2012 – and we have done that. What has been the strategy for achieving such success? When the three of us joined forces in early 2011 we set out a very clear strategy which we stuck to – to move right the way back to where our core strengths and our core competencies
“We set out a very clear strategy – to move right the way back to where our core strengths and our core competencies were”
Live dealer will continue to be a major focus for 888
were, as we had possibly taken our eye slightly off the ball in the past when we moved to a B2B business. There is a danger that when you are employing a great deal of resources into building a B2B customer base you are taking your eye off some of the core elements of your products, which had always been at the forefront, and I think possibly we lost an edge in that, but by actually concentrating straight back onto our core products we were able to gain back that edge. We have four good products driving our customer base and are making sure that we give good value for money and deliver excellence as well as great customer service. Our Poker 6 software is a prime example, as is Casino 50. When you log on to 888Casino it remembers what you liked and immediately brings to the forefront of your screen games you played last time. Our back office has become much more sophisticated, very much along the lines of the likes of Amazon and eBay. Just how big a part has poker played in that successful return to your core focus? Poker 6 has transformed our poker business. It’s very much more user-friendly than a lot of the other poker sites out there. Our marketing techniques and strategies have been aimed and geared towards recreational players – the lower ticket, higher volume approach. We attempt to dissuade professional players from coming in to our marketplace so we’re giving a much more enjoyable user experience. We’ve grown our poker to the rate of 86% year-onyear in a market where a lot of people are gamblinginsider.com 59
TALKING HEADS BRIAN MATTINGLEY, CEO, 888
seeing decline, so I think poker has been our star performer this year. When you took over as interim CEO had you given any consideration to applying for the permanent role or did you just consider yourself to be a caretaker? I don’t think we ever distinguished whether it was going to be a full role or whether it was a caretaker role – we just had a job to do. It was quite clear that the job was very much bigger than just one person – and we created the team that has been in place since then. When the opportunity arose at the end of last year/beginning of this year to do it full time, I would’ve been mad not to have done it, because we’d built up a great rapport between the three of us. How are you going to sustain your poker and casino growth moving forward? We will continually invest in our product and ensure that it’s fresh and aware of what the market is wanting – and we will adapt it. We have webcam poker, we have private poker rooms – these sort of issues are thinking slightly outside of the box, slightly more entertainment, slightly more recreational, and we will always do that. We know that live dealer is a very big part of our casino market so, again, we are looking at how we can improve that, how we can ensure that our business is always at the forefront of the innovation that comes along. Do you not harbour any desire to chase the bigger spending, more serious customers at all? No, absolutely not. I’d much rather have our funnel continually being open to bring in people who are happy to play with $25 a month, but lots of them. It’s very much more sustainable – you’re not then susceptible to a few people not playing anymore. We saw quite clearly in 2008 that our casino business saw a turning off of high-roller players, people who left us not because they didn’t like the product but because they were probably hit quite hard by the recession. Has your focus on casino and poker been to the detriment of your sportsbook results and product? No, because the way that we’re structured in distribution channels means we have different teams of people who look after poker, casino, sport and bingo. So we haven’t concentrated our efforts only in poker and casino. Sport is different at this moment in time because we don’t run our own sportsbook. It’s the only business stream where we have a shared product with somebody else, and I’m not sure that we’re getting the best value out of that. I think you’ll find that our margins are possibly a lot lower than some of the others as I’m not sure we’re that competitive. 60 gamblinginsider.com
Initially given the role on an interim basis, Mattingley says he'd have been "mad not to" take the CEO's job when offered it full time
The upgraded 'Poker 6' software and webcam poker have transformed 888Poker and helped them in attracting new players
BRIAN MATTINGLEY, CEO, 888 TALKING HEADS
Poker and casino have been two of the big factors behind 888's strong recent performance
“We are not gung-ho about America. We are not relying on the fact that America is going to be something huge in the next year or two” How do you intend to improve and develop your sportsbook product? We will use whatever mechanic we can to improve that. It is an item on our strategy for the future, to make sure that we are as competitive with sportsbook as we are in casino, poker and bingo, but I’m not prepared to say any more than that at the moment.
We’ve done some research and looked at unprompted awareness and awareness campaigns in America, and I think our 888 brand is pretty strong out there. That signals to me the importance of us having an 888 B2C customer base. We’re talking to partners at the moment and I would say an announcement will be made over the next three to six months.
What’s your strategy regarding the US? What I will say right from the very start is that we are not gung-ho about America. We are not relying on the fact that America is going to be something huge in the next year, maybe even two years. We’ve been very cautious in the way that we approach it. It could be huge but it may take us 20 years to get there. We have a very clear strategy and that is big brand with a B2B customer. We achieved that very early on with Caesars and WSOP. We also have what I consider to be a sub-consolidation brand which is WMS. WMS we see as taking bottom of the first-tier, second-tier casinos, and actually giving them an opportunity to create a marketplace for those casinos that potentially couldn’t afford to have a presence online. Outside of that we have a third strategy which we are yet to announce. We genuinely believe that we need a B2C operation in America and are quite a long way down the path of looking for a US partner.
What can we expect to see from 888 regarding social gaming? We are more confident now about the whole social gaming business model and I think you will see us have a stronger presence in social gaming in the future. We acquired Mytopia, a social games development company, but wrote off the investment we made in that. However I always said right from the very beginning that even though we wrote off any financial implications we would always keep Mytopia as a business stream and learn from it. We’ve actually doubled our revenue on Mytopia’s Bingo Island game in the last six to nine months. As we’ve got our core business beginning to run where it should have been, we have got time to be able to say ‘ok, this is next, this is the future’, although you won’t see us suddenly invent a wacky game like a Farmville or something. I find the whole concept of social gaming quite difficult to get my head round because
it’s not real money, it’s about buying trinkets and things like that, but I genuinely feel that it is a strong market – there are players out there making a lot of money out of it. [888 announced a real-money partnership with Facebook after this interview had taken place, see p24 for details.] How much focus will you be putting on mobile in 2013? Mobile will be a core focus next year – a lot of money will go into it. We have a lot more to do to make our applications more user-friendly and make sure we are very competitive, although we are seeing some exceptional results in recruitment for both poker and casino, while with sportsbook we’re taking up to 40% of our bets on mobile now. What would you say is the biggest future challenge for 888? The biggest challenge will always be the matching of your resource with the desire to move forward. To ensure you maintain decent margins at the bottom line you have to match the requirements with the resource you’ve got – so I think that will always be a struggle. We have tackled that struggle but it isn’t going to get any easier. Keeping a business going forward is always a challenge. gamblinginsider.com 61
p o t e At th e m a g of his With online gaming giants 888 going from strength to strength in recent times, Gareth Bracken met CEO Brian Mattingley to discover the secrets to his success
Brian Mattingley, pictured at 888's London offices, December 2012
58 gamblinginsider.com
BRIAN MATTINGLEY, CEO, 888 TALKING HEADS
888 COO Itai Frieberger
Social gaming title Bingo Island has brought in increased revenues for 888 in recent months
They say the end of a year represents a time for reflection on the 12 months just passed, which means that Brian Mattingley will be one of the happiest bosses in gaming heading into 2013. The 888 CEO has enjoyed an excellent 2012, presiding over the online firm’s eighth successive quarter of year-on-year revenue growth – 7% for the third quarter of 2012 – an impressive achievement primarily driven by notable increases in poker turnover, including a 21% rise for Q3. Mattingley’s success story actually began in fairly unremarkable fashion, with the experienced 60-year-old assuming the role of interim CEO in April 2011 to little fanfare following the departure of Gigi Levy. The new man’s impact was immediate however, and his and the company’s strong performance during his initial period at the helm eventually saw the former deputy chairman handed the role on a permanent basis. Meeting with Gambling Insider at 888’s Bond Street offices in London, a welcoming Mattingley was naturally keen to discuss the company’s improvements, enhancements and achievements, although he didn’t shy away from analysing the group’s less successful ventures and major challenges for the future either. The
end result paints a portrait of a leader and an organisation riding the crest of a wave – but also fully aware that many a tough task lies ahead in the quest to ensure that such a position is maintained. Have you surpassed even your own expectations of the company’s performance during your tenure as CEO? We’re exactly where I think we should be. My management team are very talented and I think the three of us, me, COO Itai Frieberger and our CFO Aviad Kobrine have always set our sights at a realistic level. I have one phrase that I continually drive into our team and that is “we will always over-deliver rather than over-promise”. I targeted quite clearly at the beginning of the year that I expected us to drive our business forward so that we saw a share price of over £1 by the end of 2012 – and we have done that. What has been the strategy for achieving such success? When the three of us joined forces in early 2011 we set out a very clear strategy which we stuck to – to move right the way back to where our core strengths and our core competencies
“We set out a very clear strategy – to move right the way back to where our core strengths and our core competencies were”
Live dealer will continue to be a major focus for 888
were, as we had possibly taken our eye slightly off the ball in the past when we moved to a B2B business. There is a danger that when you are employing a great deal of resources into building a B2B customer base you are taking your eye off some of the core elements of your products, which had always been at the forefront, and I think possibly we lost an edge in that, but by actually concentrating straight back onto our core products we were able to gain back that edge. We have four good products driving our customer base and are making sure that we give good value for money and deliver excellence as well as great customer service. Our Poker 6 software is a prime example, as is Casino 50. When you log on to 888Casino it remembers what you liked and immediately brings to the forefront of your screen games you played last time. Our back office has become much more sophisticated, very much along the lines of the likes of Amazon and eBay. Just how big a part has poker played in that successful return to your core focus? Poker 6 has transformed our poker business. It’s very much more user-friendly than a lot of the other poker sites out there. Our marketing techniques and strategies have been aimed and geared towards recreational players – the lower ticket, higher volume approach. We attempt to dissuade professional players from coming in to our marketplace so we’re giving a much more enjoyable user experience. We’ve grown our poker to the rate of 86% year-onyear in a market where a lot of people are gamblinginsider.com 59
TALKING HEADS BRIAN MATTINGLEY, CEO, 888
seeing decline, so I think poker has been our star performer this year. When you took over as interim CEO had you given any consideration to applying for the permanent role or did you just consider yourself to be a caretaker? I don’t think we ever distinguished whether it was going to be a full role or whether it was a caretaker role – we just had a job to do. It was quite clear that the job was very much bigger than just one person – and we created the team that has been in place since then. When the opportunity arose at the end of last year/beginning of this year to do it full time, I would’ve been mad not to have done it, because we’d built up a great rapport between the three of us. How are you going to sustain your poker and casino growth moving forward? We will continually invest in our product and ensure that it’s fresh and aware of what the market is wanting – and we will adapt it. We have webcam poker, we have private poker rooms – these sort of issues are thinking slightly outside of the box, slightly more entertainment, slightly more recreational, and we will always do that. We know that live dealer is a very big part of our casino market so, again, we are looking at how we can improve that, how we can ensure that our business is always at the forefront of the innovation that comes along. Do you not harbour any desire to chase the bigger spending, more serious customers at all? No, absolutely not. I’d much rather have our funnel continually being open to bring in people who are happy to play with $25 a month, but lots of them. It’s very much more sustainable – you’re not then susceptible to a few people not playing anymore. We saw quite clearly in 2008 that our casino business saw a turning off of high-roller players, people who left us not because they didn’t like the product but because they were probably hit quite hard by the recession. Has your focus on casino and poker been to the detriment of your sportsbook results and product? No, because the way that we’re structured in distribution channels means we have different teams of people who look after poker, casino, sport and bingo. So we haven’t concentrated our efforts only in poker and casino. Sport is different at this moment in time because we don’t run our own sportsbook. It’s the only business stream where we have a shared product with somebody else, and I’m not sure that we’re getting the best value out of that. I think you’ll find that our margins are possibly a lot lower than some of the others as I’m not sure we’re that competitive. 60 gamblinginsider.com
Initially given the role on an interim basis, Mattingley says he'd have been "mad not to" take the CEO's job when offered it full time
The upgraded 'Poker 6' software and webcam poker have transformed 888Poker and helped them in attracting new players
BRIAN MATTINGLEY, CEO, 888 TALKING HEADS
Poker and casino have been two of the big factors behind 888's strong recent performance
“We are not gung-ho about America. We are not relying on the fact that America is going to be something huge in the next year or two” How do you intend to improve and develop your sportsbook product? We will use whatever mechanic we can to improve that. It is an item on our strategy for the future, to make sure that we are as competitive with sportsbook as we are in casino, poker and bingo, but I’m not prepared to say any more than that at the moment.
We’ve done some research and looked at unprompted awareness and awareness campaigns in America, and I think our 888 brand is pretty strong out there. That signals to me the importance of us having an 888 B2C customer base. We’re talking to partners at the moment and I would say an announcement will be made over the next three to six months.
What’s your strategy regarding the US? What I will say right from the very start is that we are not gung-ho about America. We are not relying on the fact that America is going to be something huge in the next year, maybe even two years. We’ve been very cautious in the way that we approach it. It could be huge but it may take us 20 years to get there. We have a very clear strategy and that is big brand with a B2B customer. We achieved that very early on with Caesars and WSOP. We also have what I consider to be a sub-consolidation brand which is WMS. WMS we see as taking bottom of the first-tier, second-tier casinos, and actually giving them an opportunity to create a marketplace for those casinos that potentially couldn’t afford to have a presence online. Outside of that we have a third strategy which we are yet to announce. We genuinely believe that we need a B2C operation in America and are quite a long way down the path of looking for a US partner.
What can we expect to see from 888 regarding social gaming? We are more confident now about the whole social gaming business model and I think you will see us have a stronger presence in social gaming in the future. We acquired Mytopia, a social games development company, but wrote off the investment we made in that. However I always said right from the very beginning that even though we wrote off any financial implications we would always keep Mytopia as a business stream and learn from it. We’ve actually doubled our revenue on Mytopia’s Bingo Island game in the last six to nine months. As we’ve got our core business beginning to run where it should have been, we have got time to be able to say ‘ok, this is next, this is the future’, although you won’t see us suddenly invent a wacky game like a Farmville or something. I find the whole concept of social gaming quite difficult to get my head round because
it’s not real money, it’s about buying trinkets and things like that, but I genuinely feel that it is a strong market – there are players out there making a lot of money out of it. [888 announced a real-money partnership with Facebook after this interview had taken place, see p24 for details.] How much focus will you be putting on mobile in 2013? Mobile will be a core focus next year – a lot of money will go into it. We have a lot more to do to make our applications more user-friendly and make sure we are very competitive, although we are seeing some exceptional results in recruitment for both poker and casino, while with sportsbook we’re taking up to 40% of our bets on mobile now. What would you say is the biggest future challenge for 888? The biggest challenge will always be the matching of your resource with the desire to move forward. To ensure you maintain decent margins at the bottom line you have to match the requirements with the resource you’ve got – so I think that will always be a struggle. We have tackled that struggle but it isn’t going to get any easier. Keeping a business going forward is always a challenge. gamblinginsider.com 61
