Member Article

This gambling startup is looking to Tinder and Uber to bring bookies into the 21st Century

Love them or loathe them, it is hard to deny that bookmakers and betting shops have become a major part of the national psyche since they were legalised in the UK over 50 years ago.

There’s nary a British high street that hasn’t been blessed (or blighted, depending on your outlook) by the sight of a Ladbrokes, William Hill or other gaming emporium since the Betting and Gaming Act 1960 permitted the opening of the first betting shops from May 1961.

A flutter on the Grand National, a patriotic punt on an England World Cup win, a 1000-1 shot on an unfancied team like Leicester to win the Premier League - the act of betting has become intrinsically tied up in the very act of watching sport in the UK.

The actual process of placing a bet remained relatively unchanged for decades until the advent of smartphones.

Now, the fastidiously updated chalkboards of old have been replaced by rows of dynamically updating, live odds that can fluctuate second-to-second. Even the trusty betting slip and tiny plastic pens are finding themselves increasingly tossed aside for online apps and betting exchanges.

However, one betting startup believes this technological innovation has not gone far enough, and is betting on disruptive innovations inspired by the likes of Tinder and Uber to make placing a bet as easy as hailing a cab.

“All the website layouts and apps were just Excel spreadsheet type layouts shrunk onto a smartphone. It’s quite intimidating for the casual user.”

London’s Bookee, which has just launched its gambling app on iOS, boasts a user interface directly inspired by Tinder’s left-right swiping system that completely does away with the spreadsheet-style list of odds still favoured by the UK’s gambling big guns.

While there has been a veritable glut of apps inspired by the dating giant’s swiping system, Bookee marks the first time the approach has been applied to gambling and the firm’s founder, Adam Kalmanson, is happy to admit to borrowing from other tech luminaries too.

He told Bdaily: “We looked around at other apps like Uber trying to revolutionise the taxi space, other apps that are trying to revolutionise all different sectors but betting has remained very stagnant.”

Deeming the extent of industry innovation as merely ‘marketing offers’ over true product innovation, Kalmanson, who has previously held senior positions at William Hill, joined together with co-founder Adam Wilson two years ago to work on a new app that incorporated modern digital interfaces and design that take advantage of the potential posed by smartphones.

“We came together and we decided that there was a few issues with the current state of play in the sports betting market,” he said. “One, it was quite clunky. All the website layouts and apps were just Excel spreadsheet type layouts shrunk onto a smartphone. It’s quite intimidating for the casual user.”

The focus for Bookee from the very beginning has been usability, built around an intuitive interface that serves up bets which the user can either decline with a swipe to the left, or accept with the swipe to the right before adjusting their stake with a slider.

The process, Kalmanson explains, is rooted more in discovery rather than searching, although users can opt to cycle through a directory of available bets as well, in an effort to attract what he describes as ‘casual, recreational’ punters.

“Now Facebook and Instagram that’s how millennials consume content in this day and age. It’s in small, manageable, bite size pieces.”

Drawing on Uber’s fare split feature, the app also allows punters to share a bet with their friends, allowing users to select a contact from their contacts list who will then receive an SMS message which they can either accept or decline.

Giving users the option to reject bets also gives the firm an added layer of data capture as, unlike traditional bookmakers, it can see what users haven’t bet on as well as what they have.

All valuable data which Bookee can feed back into its design and content curation, as Kalmanson explains: “You give people one bet at a time, you give them a binary reaction decision on that bet and then you learn from it.

“Now Facebook and Instagram that’s how millennials consume content in this day and age. It’s in small, manageable, bite size pieces. As the user flicks through these platforms learn from what they’re doing and serve them better content.”

The online bookmaker has already facilitated £100k-worth of bets through its app and is targeting 40,000 to 50,000 users over the next 12 months, while Kalmanson also hinted that the firm is also exploring the possibility for other verticals such as Bingo and Casino games.

Regardless of where Bookee goes next, Kalmanson is keen to keep front and centre that founding principle of the app, to keep things as easy-to-use and intuitive as possible.

He concluded: “The whole idea of Tinder for betting is just a UX interface. That’s not the beauty behind Bookee.

“The beauty behind Bookee is making a simple, intuitive, really really fun and easy to use sports betting platform. And that it is built purely for the mobile in mind rather than anything else.”

Bookee is available now on iOS with Android support to follow in 2017.