NEWS

SOURCE: William Hill

Just six months after becoming the first UK bookmaker to own and manage its own Interactive TV station, William Hill have secured two new deals to offer more live betting related content than any other channel in the UK. Channel 425 has now raced past rival channels Racing UK and At The Races in providing armchair punters with a daily diet of 114.45 hours of live betting sport.

Hills have signed contracts with Sky Channel (Australia) and Brazilian Football Events to broadcast more than 70 hours of live sporting content in the UK. All this comes only a week after Hills released the data from a record breaking Grand National day, confirming that they are the UK’s top betting company with remote channels, when they successfully answered more than 112,000 telephone calls and processed over 300,000 bets while holding over 25,000 concurrent online users.

‘The Grand National proved how advanced our telephone and internet operations are and in order to harness the maximum potential from these channels it is important that we continue to develop our programming for our interactive TV platform on Channel 425,’ said David Harding, Chief Executive, William Hill, ‘The new content brings our weekly live broadcast content to well over 110 hours a week. Not bad for a station that only launched in October.’

‘We know, from monitoring the peak times of our internet poker and casino operations, that there are many thousands of UK insomniacs, shift workers or early risers who are a potential audience for the specific hours of the Australian racing and we believe it could easily carve a niche market,’ said Peter Nolan, e-gaming Operations Director, ‘I for one, would rather get up in the morning and switch on some live racing than watch the normal breakfast TV available in the UK.’