Platform provider OpenBet has enjoyed its most successful Grand National to date after handling a total of 19.3m sports bets across all channels on the popular National Hunt horse race which took place over the weekend. The 24-hour period leading up to the race was described as the supplier’s busiest time of the year, with 45,000 bets placed each minute at its peak, and a total of 54m account transactions made, up 24 per cent from the 2014 race.
The 2015 Grand National, won by Many Clouds, also saw a higher percentage of bets made via mobile devices. Around 63 per cent of all remote bets were made via the channel, up from 54 per cent in the previous year.
OpenBet chief executive Jeremy Thompson-Hill said that the supplier’s platform was robust enough to accommodate the surge in activity associated with the race, without any downtime.
“The Grand National is a critical event for our customers,” Thompson-Hill said. “It places huge demands on our industry and once again we have shown that OpenBet has the ability to handle the most important events seamlessly.”
“I am both thrilled and proud of our performance – a peak of 45,000 bets-per-minute and total of 19.3m bets in 24 hours demonstrates the vast scale of our business. We enabled our customers to offer the quality of service and experience that players demand.”
The record Grand National followed a successful Cheltenham Festival, with 25m sports bets handled and 146m account transactions made over the event’s four days.
Figures released by payment processor Worldpay revealed that the number of transactions processed by UK bookmakers during the Grand National grew 12.6 per cent year-on-year, and up 83.6 per cent on a typical day in April. The total value of transactions also rose, up 20.3 per cent in 2014.
“The Grand National is a sporting event that unites the nation with punters more in love with the race than ever before,” Worldpay’s vice president of gambling Alan Watson commented. “Our data confirms that this year’s Grand National was the biggest ever for Britain’s online bookies.
“While the Grand National has always been a massive betting event amongst avid race fans and the wider betting community, the ease of use and the speed of betting online has made the Grand National even more appealing to the casual fan.”
source : www.gamingintelligence.com
