Depending on how the deal falls, the sale of William Hill's operations in Australia could set off a sequence of events that act as a kind of "back-to-the-future" moment for CrownBet boss Matthew Tripp and his family.
Under this scenario, Tripp's CrownBet emerges with a resuscitated brand familiar to the Australian market and the business goes from strength to strength. Though if it does not happen, then he will have a big challenge on his hands to carve out a decent share of the $27 billion Australian racing and sports betting market.
Fresh from scrambling to find a buyer for a 62 per cent stake in his corporate bookmaking business, which ended last week with a deal for the Toronto-listed The Stars Group to pay $150 million to take that share from James Packer's Crown Resorts, Tripp has quickly switched his attention to the battle for William Hill Australia.
CrownBet and The Stars Group were one of four finalists for William Hill a week ago, a list which was whittled down to only two – CrownBet and Sportsbet – by late last week.
Tom Waterhouse could make his own comeback when William Hill is sold. Andrew Meares A winner should emerge this week, with one of the parties set to spend more than $200 million on a business that has struggled in the past few years under Tom Waterhouse's leadership to find a profitable niche in an intensely competitive industry.
Profound impact on betting
Which party is the favourite depends on who you talk to, with both keen to paint themselves as some sort of underdog.
But whatever happens will have a profound impact on the online betting industry, with the intriguing part being Tripp's past and potentially future connections with the parties involved in the potential transaction.
Take the Sportingbet brand. Sportingbet was once a London-listed betting company that made its first foray into the Australian market in 2001 when it bought the Vanuatu-based No. 1 Betting Shop in a $35 million deal from none other than Tripp's father, Alan – one of the more colourful identities in the Australian gambling sector over the last few decades.
Sportingbet was later to gain an Australian licence – Tripp senior left the business – and went from strength to strength under its Australian boss Michael Sullivan, who built it into one of the country's strongest online betting brands.
The younger Tripp, meanwhile, had bought a fledgling Darwin betting company called Sportsbet – then on the verge of administration – for about $250,000 in 2005. He too built a strong brand, eventually selling out to Paddy Power, the Irish global betting giant, in a transaction that valued the business at $338 million in 2011.
Fast forward to today and suddenly Tripp is in competition with the company that he sold out to – arguably too early given outgoing chief executive Cormac Barry has built Sportsbet into the best online betting company in Australia – for William Hill.
If Tripp and The Stars Group can win the battle for William Hill, he should considerably grow his pool of customers and online betting revenue and profits, and put a combined group into third place in the sector behind Tabcorp, now merged with Tatts Group, and Sportsbet.
Return of Sportingbet?
But crucially he could also, under that "back to the future'" scenario, get back the mothballed Sportingbet brand. That is a move which will help him considerably, given it is almost certain he will have to give up the CrownBet brand later in the year and rename his company. Already, CrownBet has told its customers they will not earn status credits for the Crown Rewards loyalty program after April 1.
William Hill stands as the prime example of how rebranding a betting company can go wrong in a hugely competitive market.
In January 2015 William Hill's board and its then-global chief executive Ralph Topping defied the warnings of focus groups that had told them they believed William Hill was a brand of smokes. They used it to replace the once thriving Sportingbet, Centrebet and TomWaterhouse.com brands. Rivals like Sportsbet, Tripp's CrownBet and Tabcorp's TAB took full advantage of the branding confusion, spending aggressively to target successfully William Hill's customer base.
If Tripp can win the battle for William Hill he could bring the Sportingbet brand back, or even Centrebet if need be (GVC Holdings owns the Sportingbet brand in most overseas markets).
It would be easier than introducing another new brand – The Stars Group has BetStars, for example – to Australia, where it will be more difficult to market given the crackdown on some betting advertisements during live sports events. Which Tripp would have to do if Sportsbet's bid for William Hill is successful.
One final twist in the William Hill sale is the Tom Waterhouse.com brand is excluded. It means Waterhouse himself could also return to a still cluttered market and make competition for the punter even more intense.