Australian challenger brand BlueBet has stated that it is nearing a market share between 10%-15% after completing its acquisition of TopSport this week.

The company, which trades as betr after merging with its fellow challenger betting brand last year, secured terms to acquire TopSport just two months ago with a price tag of AU$15m (£7.3m).

TopSport is active in the Australian state of the Northern Territory, while Sydney-based BlueBet is active throughout the country, as well as in the US, and is an ASX-listed enterprise.

Just two months after securing terms to acquire TopSport, BlueBet has migrated 63 million rows of the acquired firm’s customer data onto its platform. BlueBet asserted that this was done overnight, including transactional data, pending bets and account balances.

Andrew Menz, BlueBet CEO, said: “We have successfully completed the acquisition of TopSport, executing an innovative transaction structure that enabled us to migrate TopSport customers onto the betr platform prior to completion.

“This materially de-risked the transaction and ensured that all anticipated cost synergies were fully realised within just 55 days of announcing the deal, without the need to operate the TopSport brand or wagering platform during the transition.”

The company comes across as highly confident following the takeover. Founded in 2015, the company is a newcomer to Australia’s betting market, a well established and highly competitive landscape but one which is also undergoing regulatory changes.

Australia can be a tough nut to crack for some. The market has historically been dominated by some of its more well established legacy brands including Tabcorp, Entain’s Ladbrokes and Neds, and Flutter Entertainment’s Sportsbet.

Even major international players with reputations as legacy brands in other mature markets have struggled in Australia – William HIll offloaded its business in the country after just six years in 2018, selling to CrownBet which would later rebrand entirely as BetEasy and itself shut up shop in Australia.

Post-acquisition, BlueBet – which was founded by former WIliam Hill Australia CEO Michael Sulivan with the intention of taking on legacy brands – hopes to continue gaining market share.

The firm has already expressed confidence that there is little overlap between it and TopSport’s Northern Territory customers due to the acquired company specialising in niche sports. The takeover is therefore expected to further grow its customer base.

“With the successful integration of TopSport, our focus now shifts to further inorganic growth opportunities in the Australian market, including our compelling and fully funded proposal to acquire PointsBet,” Menz continued.

“By providing the flexibility for PointsBet shareholders to choose a mix of cash and scrip, we believe ours is a superior proposal for shareholders to realise value in the short and long term.

“Our engagement with PointsBet shareholders remains overwhelmingly positive and we look forward to progressing our discussions with the PointsBet Board.”

BlueBet’s takeover of TopSport comes a year after the aforementioned merger with betr, which was itself founded by Matthew Tripp with the goal of stripping market share off the likes of Tabcorp, Entain and Flutter.

A limited post-M&A restructuring will see TopSport CEO, Tristan Merlehan, join BlueBet’s Australian market disruption mission as Chief Trading Officer (CTO).

Source