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Cheltenham and Grand National 2025 start now

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The madness of Cheltenham and Grand National has been and gone. Congratulations on surviving; you’ve made it through and live to fight another day. So, what’s top of the agenda for today? Preparation for the 2025 edition’s of the Cheltenham Festival and the Grand National, of course!

Here are the six key planning and strategy points to consider in order to give yourself the best possible chance of success next spring.

The work begins now

Yes, Cheltenham 2025 is a long time away. But everything is fresh in your mind as of this moment. Many of the changes you may end up acting on could take a long time to execute, and there’s undoubtedly going to be countless foreseen and unforeseen priorities between now and the end of the year. Start now whilst 2024 performance is fresh in your mind and fresh within the wider business psyche. Keep the festival mindset running for as long as possible to maintain momentum and get flying out the stalls.

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Involve all parts of the business

This is not just an exercise for the IT department. Every relevant stakeholder from around the business should be represented. What were customers saying to Customer Services? How did Trading cope when their bet tickers slowed down? What offers and promotions did Marketing take note of that they would like to offer next time? Bring in stakeholders from all business arms to create a holistic view of where the opportunities lie and what challenges need to be overcome.

Look at the data

Get hold of all of your performance metrics from every component of your systems and take the time to do a deep-dive analysis on those numbers. If you haven’t got all the metrics that you’d like to have to hand? Well, there’s your starting point for the list of ‘things to fix immediately’.

Be honest with yourselves

Getting business involvement, analysing all the data, and prompt planning is all well and good. But if you’re not going to be brutally honest with yourselves as an organisation, it may be all for nothing. Yes, it’s important to acknowledge everyone’s hard work and remember all the things that you did right. But you also have to be your own harshest critics about what didn’t go so well and what could be improved on. There’s really no point in doing all this if you’re not going to seriously challenge yourselves to do better.

Next year won’t be the same as this year

You’re going to be delivering a various new features and functionalities, as well as making many changes to your internal systems over the next twelve months. So the technical landscape that 2025’s Cheltenham Festival and Grand National inhabited will be very different to the one just gone. How will that fancy new bet builder widget in development hold up under the unique stresses of Grand National day? What will your new AI recommendations engine do when everyone’s betting on just one event? You don’t need to answer these questions right now, and it’s highly likely that you won’t be able to answer all of these questions now. But you need to bake in consideration of Cheltenham and Grand National to your non-functional requirements for every change you make in the coming months.

Get a high-level plan diarised

You need to start now but you can’t finish now. This is something you’re going to need to come back to periodically until those Cheltenham gates open. It’s a simple but powerful scheduling task: put the key staging posts in relevant team’s diaries now. You don’t want wake up in a cold sweat one morning in January realising that you’re two months out from the Greatest Show on Turf and haven’t made notable progress on the fixes required from this year’s festivals.

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By: Graham Cassell, Partner at Circle Squared

The post Cheltenham and Grand National 2025 start now appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

Industry News

IGT Achieves Improved ESG Score from FTSE Russell

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International Game Technology PLC announced that it has achieved an environmental, social and governance (ESG) Score of 4.3 out of 5.0 from FTSE Russell, positioning IGT in the 97th percentile within the Travel and Leisure sector of FTSE Russell’s ESG Scores. This was an improvement from IGT’s previous ESG Score of 4.2 out of 5.0 in 2023, demonstrating its ongoing commitment to enhancing ESG performance.

“As a company committed to continually elevating our sustainability practices and leadership, IGT is proud to once again achieve an improved ESG score from FTSE Russell. Through our global Sustainable Play program, we execute sustainable practices and policies throughout our company and this improved score validates our ongoing efforts,” Wendy Montgomery, SVP of Marketing, Communications and Sustainability at IGT, said.

FTSE Russell’s ESG Scores and data model allows investors to understand a company’s exposure to, and management of, ESG issues in multiple dimensions. The ESG Scores are comprises an overall rating that breaks down into underlying pillar and theme exposures. Scores built on over 300 individual indicator assessments are applied to each company’s unique circumstances. The ESG Scores align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), all of which are reflected in FTSE Russell’s ESG framework.

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Super Group Appoints Merrick Wolman to its Board of Directors

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Super Group has appointed Merrick Wolman to its Board of Directors, effective from February 18, 2025.

Mr. Wolman is the Chief Executive Officer of a global finance company and has worked closely with the Super Group executive team for over two decades.

Neal Menashe, Chief Executive Officer of Super Group, said: “We are very pleased to welcome Merrick to the board. His deep understanding of the gaming industry, alongside his wide range of experience in executive roles, will be of great value as we continue to pursue our global growth strategy and build on our successes to date.”

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This appointment brings the total directors on Super Group’s board to nine, including five independent directors.

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Kindred Reports Decline in Revenue from High-risk Players for Q4 2024

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Kindred Group has reported decline in its share of revenue from high-risk players for the fourth quarter 2024 at 2.7% (Q3 2024 3.2%). The percentage of detected customers who exhibited improved behaviour after interventions showed an improvement at 92.2% (compared to 87.3% in Q3 2024). This positive trend is mainly the result of stricter measures across key markets, improved internal processes, as well as the exit from non-locally licensed markets as part of to the acquisition by La Française des Jeux (FDJ) in October 2024. This shift reflects Kindred’s broader commitment to maintaining high regulatory standards and fostering safer gambling practices.

“It is pleasing to see the decline in high-risk revenue during the fourth quarter of last year. We know that the share fluctuates between quarters, but the long-term trend is showing a steady decline. We remain dedicated and focused on improving our systems and processes to ensure we offer our customers a safe and fun experience,” Esther Scheepers, Head of Responsible Gambling at Kindred Group, said.

“The increased focus on responsible gambling by regulators and the industry is welcomed. From our end, we see that by combining our expertise with emerging technologies, we can further enhance detection capabilities. We are currently working on our existing detection system in combination with an additional system that will enable us to integrate more robust compliance features and optimize our overall approach to safer gambling. Furthermore, we are exploring opportunities to expand our research efforts, aiming to support data-driven discussions and looking at emerging trends in consumer protection. All these aspects are important to protect the integrity of the licence model and maintain a level playing field,” Esther Scheepers added.

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