SkyBet Bookmaker Review

SkyBet Bookmaker may be part of the Murdoch media empire, but how was it assembled?

You would expect a Murdoch company simply to go out and buy an online betting company when he wanted to get involved in that market. In a sense that happened but it was an organic growth of acquired companies, if you follow that drift, that forms the impressive Sky betting operation of today.

The first acquisition was a strange one. At the start of this century they bought a company called Hestview Ltd that traded as Surrey Sports. This company was the foundation stone of the SkyBet betting division and Hestview Ltd still holds the vast betting interests now. Sky did not even bother changing its unconnected name. The reason this was a particularly odd purchase was that Surrey Sports was so small and was not even trading on the internet. It was basically a minor telephone betting company. You would be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of mistake, for the Murdoch empire had bought an irrelevant minnow of the gambling world. This was not an appropriate beginning for such a big fish and there was work to be done.

Meanwhile, in a parallel world, a company called ukbetting started from scratch in a London kitchen in August 1998 as the first UK-based online bookmaker. ukbetting was sold in 2000 to ENIC Plc, the then investment division of the current owners of Tottenham. Current Spurs chairman Daniel Levy negotiated the purchase. Levy then sold on a controlling share and at the same time floated the firm to create ukbetting Plc. It was a very quiet transaction, but the new public company followed the advice of ukbetting’s now long-gone original founder and bought the Sporting Life website. The next purchase was the Tote’s quite badly-run and rather rudderless Totalbet internet betting site. Then the company bought a host of other media sports sites.

Well, what has that got to do with SkyBet Bookmaker? You guessed it. Sky, spotting the potential, bought ukbetting Plc, which by now had changed its name to the 365Media Group. That name was an eye-raising choice given the fact there was the completely unrelated and already booming Bet365 operation. But you sort of got the impression the directors of 365Media Group, prior to Sky’s purchase of it, did not know the betting industry too well. Perhaps they missed the fact that one of their chief competitors was called the remarkably similar Bet365. Despite their ignorance, they did do well out of the sale as their pockets were filled.

Sky merged the ukbetting and Totalbet brands into SkyBet and suddenly Murdoch had a serious gambling company on his hands. They set about ensuring all the media sites, as well as their own websites and sports TV satellite stations, fed the betting operation. The synergies were obvious and Sky has taken full advantage, turning that once ugly duckling called Hestview Ltd into an amazing online gambling empire. Not only is there the sports betting action, there is now the bingo, poker, casino and games options. At the heart of it all is the best betting platform available, courtesy of Orbis. The latter is also a Murdoch company.

If you have made it this far then you have done well. You have read a unique and accurate history of the birth and development of Murdoch’s betting business. What has been created is the envy of its rivals: sports content sites and media organisations feeding millions of punters per annum to the online interactive betting site. SkyBet Bookmaker has come a long way.