You might have booked a holiday with them, or at the very least sat on board one of their flights.
But now, you can place your bets with the company behind the EasyJet aviation company.
Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the billionaire entrepreneur, is famed for his ‘Easy’ stable of brands. And now he has another: EasyBet.
Taking It Easy
Having made attempts to break into a number of industries over the years – with varying levels of success, Stelios has decided that now is the right time to launch EasyBet.
That’s despite the probability, according to numerous reports, that gambling operators will be on the receiving end of hiked taxes in the government’s Autumn Budget.
Nevertheless, the EasyJet founder has signed a white label agreement with Triplebet, who are best known for their Matchbook betting exchange.
Unsurprisingly, then, EasyBet has also been launched as an exchange, with the traditional repertoire of back and lay betting opportunities.
But they are offering a selection of enhanced specials; a series of curated doubles and trebles that deliver boosted odds to punters. It is incredibly rare for an exchange to offer multiple bets, so maybe this will prove to be a USP for the EasyBet brand as they look to make in-roads into an already well-populated sector.
Stelios will be hoping that Triplebet’s regulatory difficulties are now well behind them. In 2020, the firm had its operating licence suspended by the UK Gambling Commission – for a period of six months, all told – and they were also fined £740,000.
Triplebet, whose majority shareholder at the time was professional punter and Brentford FC owner Matthew Benham, were found to have breached a number of licensing conditions.
They were found to have been severely lacking in enacting their anti-money laundering policy, while some players – including one that had previously self-excluded – were able to wager considerable sums without any intervention from Triplebet employees.
Although Haji-Ioannou has been somewhat tight lipped about the new launch, he did reveal in a short press release:
“We are delighted to welcome EasyBet.net to the ‘easy’ family of brands, which is a natural new market to complement our other large consumer brands in the UK and Ireland.”
Easy Pickings?
One of the other reasons for the launch of EasyBet, you’d wager, is Haji-Ioannou’s famously tenacious protection of the ‘easy’ branding – even if, technically speaking, you can’t actually trademark a verb.
“Some people think they can make a fast buck by stealing our name and our reputation,” the billionaire writes on a page entitled ‘brand thieves’.
“They set up websites and companies using the name ‘easy’ (or phonetic versions of it), which can either pay a passing resemblance to an easyGroup company or be a direct copy.”
The sports betting sector has played host to similarly-named operations – the pre-existing EasyBet.com, for example, revealing why Stelios was unable to get his hands on the plum .com extension for his brand.
According to EasyBet.net, the new product launch will ‘provide customers with the assurance of a legitimate member of the easy family and a trusted ‘easy’ brand, and prevent any further brand infringement in this sector.’
In their marketing materials, EasyBet have referenced a number of other ‘brand led’ entrances into sports betting, which also utilised white label partnerships as a way to break into the sector without the overheads of building websites and apps from scratch.
Broadcaster and media firm Sky have successfully branched out into wagering via their variety of platforms, which include Sky Bet, Sky Casino and Sky Vegas.
And one of EasyJet’s competitors in the aviation space, Virgin, have also expanded their empire into sports betting. Although not boasting a particularly huge slice of market penetration, Virgin Bet is still operational and has even begun sponsoring a number of UK racecourses and horse racing meetings.
Chester Racecourse is thrilled to announce a new partnership with Virgin Bet and LiveScore Bet👏
Virgin Bet will be the title sponsor of the Autumn Racing Food & Drink Weekend, now called the Virgin Bet Autumn Racing Food & Drink Weekend!
Read more – https://t.co/6t5R9WbzQ4 pic.twitter.com/HD5rSEAJku
— chesterraces (@ChesterRaces) September 10, 2024
Even Ryanair, another EasyJet rival, has branched out into selling scratchcards on board its flights.
But with a number of high-profile failures to his name, Haji-Ioannou will be hoping that his new launch finds it easy-peasy to gain traction in the market.
He’ll be hoping that EasyBet doesn’t emulate another brand-led entrant into the industry which came a-cropper.
Sun Bets, the betting arm of The Sun daily newspaper, was launched in 2016. But the venture would last less than two years, with reports of eye-watering £50 million losses.
So bad was the performance of Sun Bets that Tabcorp, who provided the back-end software for the bookmaker, simply walked away from their deal with News UK back in 2018.