Online Casino, casinos

BWIN Directors smash the online games monopoly    

At the end of 2009, France will be opened up to Internet betting. Pioneers in this area, Norbert Teufelberger and Manfred Bodner, the two Austrians from Bwin, are aiming to grab the largest slice of the cake.

Norbert Teufelberger and Manfred Bodner will long remember that night of 15th September 2006, under arrest at the Nice police station. In the afternoon, during AS Monaco’s training, the Austrian duo unveiled the new shirts, emblazoned with the company’s logo for the football club, without a care in the world, when the police arrived without warning and took them off handcuffed. The Bwin directors found themselves in the company of petty thieves and prostitutes in a cold and filthy jail. “Imprisonment straight out of the Middle Ages!” remembers Manfred who ended up with three days in prison, 300,000 euros bail and an indictment for breaking the law on gaming for money.

The Internet leader. A year and a half later the elegant forty year-old is preparing to enter France by the front door. It’s only a question of months: by the autumn of 2009, at the latest, gaming barriers will fall. The Budget minister Eric Woerth is putting the finishing touches to a draft liberalising law.  The Française des Jeux and PMU monopoly will be over. Bwin and its European competitors (Interwetten, Betfair, PartyGaming) will be able to offer sporting bets, horse racing and poker parties to us here in France. The owners of the Partouche and Barrière casinos are also on the starting blocks. The market looks juicy and could quickly achieve millions of euros. Bwin, European number 1 of online betting with sales of 350 million euros and 1.6 million customers in 2007, aim to grab the lion’s share. “Our arrest was at the end of the day, an accelerator” exult Manfred and Bodner whose offices are at the ex Vienna stock market.

Austrians by birth, European at heart, the Bwin cofounders are not put off by frontiers. A year after the fall of the Berlin wall, Manfred Bodner, with a degree in Economics, had created a mailing company in Hungary. At his side, Norbert Teufelberger, after a course at Business School, went off to work in a casino in the United States. These days they both live in Gibraltar but spend their time going around the world looking for new markets, with a few regular stopovers at Bwin’s three operational sites: Vienna, where they develop their technology (worthy of the most successful financial sites), Gibraltar where their 70 bookmakers are set up, along with customer service, and Stockholm, the centre for poker and casino gaming activity.

They’ve already hit the jackpot. These two strange birds were amongst the first to recognise the remarkable potential of online gaming. It’s 10 years ago that what was first named “Betandwin” was created. With clear role definition:  To Manfred went the strategic and marketing decisions, to Norbert the financial and legal aspects. In 2000 they raised 55 million euros on the Vienna stock market. In 2001 they acquired a trading licence in Gibraltar (fiscally very advantageous), which opened the door to the European market. All they needed to do then was to unfold the whole gamut of games of luck. Online casino (2001), direct sporting bets (2002) and poker (2004). Rechristened Bwin, the start-up has become, over 6 years, the sector heavyweight with 1,300 employees and a stock market value of 750 million euros (the cofounders hold just a few percent of the stock.)

Bwin often skirts the boundaries in countries that defend their monopoly. In France tens of thousands of players log on to their site on the margins of legality, which was the reason for the imprisonment of the two pirates. The same confused position exists in Italy, Germany, Greece and Hungary. But the two acolytes are not content just to put a foot in the door. They are also armed on the legal front. In May 2006, they took France to the European Commission’s courts for breach of European Community law. That is why, under pressure from Brussels, France decided to open the market in a “controlled” way, in other words conditionally. The principle of parimutuel betting will be maintained for horse racing, new operators will need to obtain agreement for each type of activity (sporting bets, horse racing, casino) and pay multiple taxes.  

Norbert Teufelberger and Manfred Bodner will therefore have to show a clean pair of hands. For some months, they have moreover been cleaning up their business’ image. “It’s high-tech entertainment” Antonio Costanzo likes to say, responsible for Bwin’s French project. The visits they’ve made to the Budget minister to demonstrate the transparency of their accounts have been innumerable. “Today, we have become respectable” Manfred Bodner enjoys saying.

Intense Lobbying. The battle is not entirely over: certain parliamentarians, in particular the UMP member Yvelines Jacques Myard, are pleading for a minimum market opening. Bwin has therefore sent its cohorts out on an intense lobbying campaign before the draft law is brought before parliament, prospectively next autumn. As on that May morning in the plush Victor Hugo rooms at the Senate, when two pretty ambassadors for the business came to unveil their case before Senator François Trucy, 76 years old and author of two reports on gaming for money. Transparency? “We trace all money movements.” “Player protection?” “Bets are limited to 5,000 euros a month. “The tax regime?” “Too much tax and players will bet on illegal sites that are more lucrative.” »

Once the market is open, we can expect Bwin’s flags to be flying just about everywhere: on the small screen, in cinemas and also on the pitch on the team shirts (in 2007 they sponsored Real Madrid). “They have a blanket advertising strategy” notes a competitor, Christophe Dhaisne from Unibet.  In 2007, Bwin spent 110 million euros on marketing. The two Austrians have opened discrete discussions with TF1, Canal Plus and Orange: this time, to sell their betting system on the “TV” or by mobile phone, on the condition that it is allowed by law.

More than 5,000 bets on 90 sports.
From the 2008 Euro football matches to ski jumping via Gaelic wrestling, you can bet on practically everything on Bwin. The online site, specialist in sporting bets, is involved in 500 football leagues spread over 100 countries. The name of the top goal scorer? Of the last goalkeeper to touch the ball? The number of yellow cards or balls out of play at half time? Everything is a pretext for betting. Its strategy: get to the biggest number of people possible and get them to bet small sums (8 euros on average) very often. At the last football world cup they reached a record 90 bets a second!

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