Analysis: Mobile gaming focus pays off for Hills

With William Hill’s sports betting business suffering a dent from two weekends of punter-friendly results, the company’s gaming business was its standout performer last quarter as it continues to invest heavily in the channel.

This morning’s interim management statement revealed mobile gaming revenue had increased 142% year-on-year with the channel now accounting for 27% of total online gaming net revenues, up from 13% during the same period in 2013.

CEO Ralph Topping said these figures demonstrated mobile is going from “strength to strength” off the back of new product launches including an iPad app for bingo and a new live casino iPhone app earlier this month.

The operator’s mobile gaming business has been growing strongly for some time now with the consistent triple-digit growth throughout 2013. William Hill has set itself the lofty ambition of generating the same proportion of revenues from mobile as it does in sports betting ““ some 45%.

The signs were good in its full-year results when, despite total net gaming revenue being flat in 2013, revenue from its mobile poker, bingo and casino products was up 175% year-on-year to £40m, capping off a busy year of investment, development and launches.

The company’s core mobile gaming product, William Hill Vegas, has consistently taken a top five position in the casino category of the Apple App Store since launching last November. The app now sits in first place at the time of writing.

Meanwhile the opening of William Hill’s new mobile “centre of excellence”, in the heart of London’s so-called Silicon Roundabout, was perhaps the biggest indication yet that it could meet the high expectations it had set itself for mobile gaming.

The head of the new facility, chief technology officer Finbarr Joy, recently told eGaming Review that he was pleased within the progress the team was making. “In terms of the immediate validation of what we were looking to get right, the early signs are excellent,” he said.

The operator has also ramped up its investment in the payment features with the apps, including multiple payment options and seamless integration across web and native products.

But now William Hill is set to for one of its biggest moves yet. The operator is planning to follow in the footsteps of Sky Betting and Gaming and Coral with the imminent launch of a complete single sign-in function between its mobile apps, boosting its ability to cross-sell customers between sports and gaming.

“We did the heavy lifting on single sign-on last year”¦ we’re just finishing the last bits and pieces now,” Topping told analysts this morning.