While nordic horse racing in Australia may be best known for its charismatic Swedish racecaller, racing in Norway could soon catapult onto the global stage with the investment being made in their industry starting with upgrades to their tote system via a 10-year engagement with wagering tech company BetMakers (ASX: BET).
The increase to international coverage of racing in Australia has seen Norwegian horse racing broadcast on Sky Racing but the industry remains lacklustre relative to their wider European market. This has been compounded by the fact Norway’s tote system has undertaken minimal changes since its foundation in 1982 where it is governed by the laws of Norway.
Seeking to bring their pari-mutuel technology on par with the industry standard which opens the nation up more to online betting exposure, Betmakers’ wholly-owned European subsidiary Global Tote has been contracted to become the new tote technology and services provider for the country of Norway under a 10-year agreement.
The mandate will see Global Tote deliver a fully-managed SaaS solution to replace Norsk Rikstoto’s current parimutuel betting system which can be integrated with web, mobile and terminal platforms.
“Further to this new Norway deal expanding Global Tote’s footprint in Europe, we are particularly proud of the fact that, as a Company, BetMakers now provides key tote betting services to three of the four Nordic countries that offer betting on racing,” said BetMakers CEO, Todd Buckingham.
“Global Tote is the chosen national tote services provider of the Nordics in Denmark, Finland and Norway.”
The addition of Norway to their European customers continues a global push being made by the Aussie tech company as one of the largest tech providers in the wagering space as the industry continues to accelerate its digital transformation.
Rather than being a bookmaker that accepts bets, BetMakers provides the underlying technology that can be licenced by bookmakers to offer the services digitally, accepting and processing bets via BetMarkers centralised servers. This ensures each individual operator does not need to track sports and wagering results themselves and their customer’s bets are settled when the green light has been given by BetMakers.
As a previously little-known small cap based out of Sydney, BetMakers has emerged as one of the bigger players in the wagering tech space since being backed by wagering kingmaker Matt Tripp in 2021.
Best known as the founder of SportsBet which he built up to be Australia’s top online sportsbetting site before selling the business to Paddy Power in 2010, he then went on to do a similar thing with BetEasy where he took over before selling his stake to TSG in 2016.
Since his appointment as a strategic advisor to BetMakers, Tripp has been instrumental in the Company making a $4 billion bid to acquire Tabcorp’s (ASX: TAH) wagering business which ultimately failed when the Company decided to de-merge it under its current ownership.
For the half year ended 31 December 2021, BetMakers reported $43.3m in revenue which was a 472% increase. A $27.8m net loss was also incurred over that period however with the Company continuing to invest in their tech development while entering new global markets like this Norway deal.
Alfred Chan is an Analyst at Emerald Financial, specialising in ASX-listed small cap companies.
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