A dabble in the future of betting: Meet the bookie acting more like a social media platform
One of the country’s older bookmakers, Tabcorp, has just taken a$33m stake in one of the youngest, Dabble. And it’s all because of Gen Z.
A couple of characters called GorillaBetz and TracksideTrav just might be the future of betting.
The duo are some of the stars on Dabble – a fledgling online social betting company that was little known until this week when wagering giant Tabcorp agreed to pay $33m for a 20 per cent stake in a business that only took its first bet in late July 2021.
The deal gives Dabble an enterprise value of $165m, and while Tabcorp is worth more than $2bn, Dabble is already worth about twice as much as another ASX-listed bookie, BlueBet.
It might have a valuation multiple akin to heady dotcom start-ups, but with annual revenue of about $47m Dabble has signed up 150,000 customers in less than 18 months and boasts that 80 per cent are aged between 18 to 35.
But that is only part of the reason why Tabcorp invested in Dabble and why other wagering businesses are taking such a close look at its business model as bookies grapple with the vexed question of how to reach younger customers.
In Dabble’s case, think of a combination of Instagram-style influencers – the likes of GorillaBetz and TracksideTrav – and a Reddit thread or Twitter feed, Twitch-like streaming, mixed in with personalities like those that dominate Whirlpool forums. And betting.
Generation Z, Dabble chief executive Tom Rundle tells The Weekend Australian, are loving it. He calls Dabble a “social media app for people who like to bet … rather than being a betting app with a social (function)”. The difference could be crucial.
There are plenty of bookmakers offering functions where groups of friends can bet together like they might at a pub, but few have combined that socialising with betting as much as Dabble has.
“We think people who prefer betting socially rather than individually are about one-third of the market, which puts that revenue at $1.5bn to $2bn per year. That is only going to grow,” says Rundle, when discussing the scale of Dabble’s ambitions.
“If we can get to that within 10 years then that will give us about one-third of the market and I think that is more than achievable for our business. We are not here to be a niche player. Our ambitions are not small.”
While confident about Dabble’s future, which also includes applying for a licence in the Canadian province of Ontario as part of its expansion plans, Rundle claims the company’s growth will be measured.
“I’m not going to say we are going to get to 400,000 customers this year. But we want to double the base eventually and then probably grow at 40 per cent a year and then after seven to eight years that is where we think we are going to get to.”
They are heady predictions.
But Dabble quietly attracted the attention of betting executives back in April, when it was named by analyst Andy Orbach of Taylor Collison as the second-most-downloaded among Australian sports betting apps, outperforming established names like Tabcorp’s TAB, PointsBet, Bet365 and BlueBet. “Our marketing budget for that month would not have been any more than $1m,” says Rundle.
The apps and websites of the more traditional bookies are mostly packed with betting odds for racing and sport. Essentially, they are the digital versions of checking the odds at the betting ring on a racecourse, choosing a horse and placing a bet with a bookie.
Many of these look reasonably similar, save for a change of colour scheme and brand.
On the Dabble app, the first screen a user sees is an activity feed that looks like a social media account on Twitter or Instagram, with punters sharing betting tips or boasting about wins or lamenting near-misses. They use emojis, acronyms and other short forms of communication.
Like social media, Dabble users follow other users who have public accounts or connect with friends who want to stay private.
Famous names like former football player Heath Shaw, who played in Collingwood’s 2010 AFL grand final win – he was later censured for betting while a player – will share tips that can be directly copied by a follower. The number of copies are tallied, just like Twitter or Instagram “likes”.
The influencers, Rundle says, are an integral part of Dabble’s business model – as is the case with social media businesses.
“We don’t have Kim Kardashian, we’ve got GorillaBetz who has 50,000 followers. People love Gorilla. I don’t know how old he is, he could be 40 or 20, but on average these tipsters are 26 years old, extroverted, like to talk about tips, explain why they’re backing things,” he adds.
TracksideTrav is another, and on the morning Dabble speaks to The Weekend Australian, customers have already copied his tips 71 times for racing at Caulfield.
“He’s just someone who likes to bet and he likes to influence markets and the community. Just like in any forum like Reddit or Whirlpool there are people who like to get on there and be dominant,” says Rundle. “We see some of them as content creators, the same way as Twitter or more so YouTube or TikTok – once someone creates a lot of content and they are very influential we have a closer relationship with them and sometimes we might pay them to maintain their activity. We didn’t create them, they have come to us, built their own profiles just like an Instagram influencer would.”
Like e-sports, where young fans will watch streams for hours and interact, Dabble has a “watchalong” feature where an influencer like Shaw will chat with customers online during meets, sharing race tips and betting promotions.
The biggest innovation in bookmaking in the last two decades has been the advent of wagering by internet or mobile phone, sparking huge advertising spending by the established bookies.
Sportsbet spent $187m in advertising and marketing last year, much of it irreverent advertising aimed at young males, while Entain has a two-brand strategy: Ladbrokes is focused on racing, while Neds skews to a younger demographic in its betting offerings.
Andrew Catterall, the Australian boss of PointsBet, says his firm’s “exclusive markets”, which allows for personalised boosting of odds based on preferred sports teams or athletes, has been popular with younger punters.
PointsBet has also used NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal and satirical Instagram account The Inspired Unemployed in advertising.
Albury-based brothers Jonathan and David Robin, 28 and 32 respectively, had a digital marketing business called LRI Media, which provides sports content to websites and social media. It ran forums and Facebook pages on which customers would share their betting tips, which would involve copying the bets they placed with bookmaking apps, and pasting on a Facebook page where they would also post opinions.
The Robin brothers, Rundle says, saw an opportunity to integrate that experience with being a bookmaker. They recruited Rundle, a former PointsBet chief operating officer, via LinkedIn and launched in July last year – about a year after the first piece of code for Dabble was written.
Tabcorp chief executive Adam Rytenskild says Dabble is “one of the most unique wagering brands” and that his company’s investment “fits perfectly with our transformation agenda” to become a more digitally focused business.
“Our stake in Dabble will give us exposure to innovative product capability and ultimately to a younger customer base,” he says.