SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
WantMyBet was founded by Olly Joshi, Will Chapman and Tom Gooday, with the trio dissatisfied with the current offerings available for fans seeking well-informed betting advice.
SBC spoke to Olly Joshi to discuss the new social betting platform, Jimmy Bullard as a butler and how they’re setting about improving football betting for the everyday punter.
SBC: Olly, congratulations on the UK launch. Would you care to introduce SBC readers to WantMyBet? What is its ethos?
Olly: Thanks very much, it’s been a very successful launch so far so can’t complain! Sure, WantMyBet is a social network for football betting.
Our ethos is simple, we want to make it easier to bet than it would be going onto a bookmaker’s site whilst providing our users with a wealth of information to hopefully give them a better chance of winning. Whether that information is through viewing other users’ track records and copying bets of the top players on our site, or simply using the integrated Opta stats and user generated rationales to make sense of whether you think a tip is good or not.
SBC: You’ve launched in partnership with William Hill, Boylesports, Betway and Ladbrokes. What made these four stand out amidst the bustling UK bookmaker market? Moreover what do these partnerships offer?
Olly: When we first conceptualised WantMyBet one of our key objectives was to ‘make betting easier’.
We were more than aware of the current affiliate space and just couldn’t understand how for a model that solely relies on revenue from sign ups, how incredibly hard they made it for new users to sign up. ‘Here is a tip, if you like it, click here to bet on it.’ [user clicks and is dropped on a bookmaker homepage] The user was then expected to sift through all the sign up promo offers to eventually sign up, and then had to try and remember the tip and navigate the site to place it. Bearing in mind, if they are not familiar with betting, they probably wouldn’t have a clue where to find the specific markets. This is complicated.
The current affiliate world operates in the hope that having a decent volume of traffic will be good enough. They need to understand the user experience and adapt to their needs. That is what we are aiming to do, starting with the root. For a bookmaker to be a partner on our platform their API must accommodate a deep level of integration allowing users to sign up and bet directly from our site. We only ask a user to fill out our long form once then this information is used to sign up with whichever partners they want to sign up with.
If they already have an account they can simply connect an existing account, WantMyBet will then act as a hub for all their betting activity. The partners we have chosen can currently do this, we have a waiting list of other bookies who are keen to get involved but are still working on their API’s before they can get involved. So expect to see a couple more added into the mix in the not so distant future.
SBC: Two popular figures in English culture are involved already! How did Example and Jimmy Bullard come to be associated with WantMyBet?
Olly: Elliot (Example) is a massive football fan and also a big supporter of the UK start up scene. He heard about WMB and wanted to get involved, he totally shares our vision in what we are trying to achieve which is fantastic. Also takes us out for the odd cheeky Nandos too which is a double bonus.
Jimmy was involved for our launch, he did a sterling effort being dressed up as a butler all day. He is genuinely one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met! We have some fantastic outtakes of him from the launch video, that might be making an appearance soon.
SBC: As a social network, interaction with fans is pivotal. Will there be a multi-platform approach to this? What incentives and prizes will you be offering to ensure customers stay active?
Olly: Indeed, we’re currently reaching out to fans over social and email. We’re obviously very conscious not to over do it, we don’t want to be seen as that annoying friend who just won’t shut up.
Prizes and incentives are growing. Currently we are doing weekly competitions offering cash prizes for the best win to a pre-set challenge. We are also offering a referral scheme where users can earn hard cold cash if recommended users sign up to one of our partners off a shared referral link (which is automatically attached to every tip shared off our platform). Users can earn £5 per new user, so could be a nice little bit of pocket money.
We also have a fair few more top secret incentives which we hope to be adding to the site very soon. Watch this space.
SBC: Another important partnership has already been formed with stats kings, Opta. What does this bring to the table?
Olly: As mentioned earlier, stats are now an integral part to bettors’ gambling experience. Research from a recent Mintel report shows that 68% of sports bettors deemed it important to research stats before placing a bet. Therefore, we wanted to ensure this was part of our experience in our effort to make betting easier.
SBC: What are the aims for the rest of the 2015/16 season?
Olly: We’re already seeing the community organically grow at a much faster pace than we ever imagined. Aims for the rest of this season are to continue to grow our community whilst taking their feedback in to make WantMyBet the only place to go for football betting.
We’re currently halfway through our second round of funding, so we’ll be looking to finish this investment round in the next few months. Then the app is due to launch early next year, currently it is a HTML5 fully responsive site.
SBC: Finally, we love the promo video, but can we really win Jimmy Bullard as a butler?
Olly: Hahaha. I can’t promise Jimmy. However, we could probably stretch to giving you our social media chap. He’s a swell guy.
Olly Joshi, WantMyBet Founder
